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in  2016  with  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/olympianstributeOOhubb 


Compiled  from 
THE  FRA  Magazine 


Copyrighted  by 
The  Roycrofters,  1921 


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CONTENTS 


HENRY  HUDSON  . 

• 

9 

MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

34 

INGERSOLL  . 

• 

49 

Emerson 

• 

56 

Tolstoy 

• 

68 

Gustave  le  bon 

• 

76 

Victor  Hugo 

. 

87 

Andrew  Lang  . 

• 

99 

Jean  Jacques  Rousseau 

106 

EDGAR  ALLEN  POE 

• 

115 

PLUTARCH  . 

• 

121 

Thoreau 

• 

132 

Aristotle  . 

143 

THE  OLYMPIANS 


HENRY  HUDSON 

DISCOVERER 

E belong  to  the  Aryan  Race,  and  the 
Aryan  Race  had  its  beginnings  on 
the  uplands  of  India.  There  men 
multiplied  The  conditions  were 
right — soil,  sunshine,  water.  But 
the  food-supply  did  not  keep  pace 
with  the  growth  of  population.  And  besides,  there 
grew  up  the  leisure  class,  which  showed  its  power 
by  a conspicuous  waste  and  a conspicuous  leisure. 
This  class  is  made  up  of  two  elements — the  soldier 
and  the  priest.  Both  are  parasites,  and  when  they 
have  their  undisputed  way,  are  tyrants. 

To  find  freedom  and  bread,  men  swarmed. 

There  were  six  principal  migrations  from  India, 
as  follows:  the  Egyptian,  the  Assyrio-Semitic, 
the  Greco-Roman,  the  Teutonic,  the  Celtic,  the 
Norse  $•* 

Civilization  had  its  rise  in  Egypt,  where  the  city 
of  Memphis  once  ruled  the  world.  Memphis  was 

9 


the  educational,  the  financial,  the  artistic  hub  of 
the  universe. 

When  Moses  led  the  children  of  Israel  out  of 
captivity,  fifteen  centuries  before  Christ,  Memphis 
was  already  falling  into  decay.  Civilization  had 
moved  on,  and  younger  blood,  that  carried  a redder 
hue,  was  in  the  saddle.  Babylon  and  Nineveh  had 
siphoned  the  best  of  Egyptian  youth  and  genius. 
<[  Note  how  Egypt  grown  old,  senile  and  satisfied 
with  her  own  achievements  could  not  afford  Moses 
room  to  exercise  his  powers.  He  had  to  go  out  into 
the  desert  in  order  to  find  space  in  which  to  breathe, 
and  in  which  to  formulate  a moral  code  that  had  in 
it  enough  of  the  saving  formaldehyde  of  common- 
sense  to  make  it  last  thirty-five  centuries  and  more. 
C Memphis  lies  buried  beneath  a hundred  feet  of 
drifting  sands. 

The  broken  fragments  of  Babylon  and  Nineveh 
strew  the  plains. 

CIVILIZATION  pushed  on  and  we  get  the  grand- 
eur that  was  Greece.  The  armless  and  headless 
marbles  in  the  British  Museum  symbol  the  splendor 
of  her  dreams.  Greece  for  a time  ruled  the  world, 
and  Athens  was  the  center  of  art,  philosophy  and 
finance.  Alexander,  captain-general  of  the  Greek 
10 


forces,  conquered  the  world  and  then  died  sighing 
for  more  worlds  to  conquer. 

Greece  lived  her  little  day;  and  then  the  Romans 
overran  her  borders  and  tumbled  her  priceless 
marbles  from  their  pedestals,  thinking  they  were 
gods  £©» 

Rome  subjugated  the  world — or  at  least  all  she 
could  find  of  it.  And  having  succeeded  she  sat  back 
and  got  lime  in  her  bones,  and  worshiped  the  god 
Terminus,  telling  of  the  things  she  had  done  in  the 
days  agone. 

This  gave  the  barbarian  his  chance,  and  the  Goths 
and  Vandals  played  pitch  and  toss  with  the  things 
that  had  brought  her  fame. 

In  the  year  Five  Hundred  after  Christ,  we  find 
Constantinople  supreme,  with  Justinian  and  Theo- 
dora dividing  the  power  of  the  world  between  them. 
<[  Then  were  cast  those  four  bronze  horses,  which 
now  ornament  the  portals  of  Saint  Mark’s  in 
Venice 

The  marauding  Norse,  those  wolves  of  the  sea, 
coveted  the  horses,  so  they  took  them  by  divine 
right.  They  also  annexed  about  everything  else 
that  was  portable.  And  behold!  Venice,  throned, 
on  her  hundred  isles,  becomes  mistress  of  the  seas, 
the  center  of  art  and  light  and  education.  Hers  was 

11 


the  badge  of  power,  hers  the  pomp  and  circum- 
stance of  war. 

BUT  not  forever.  Spain  is  forging  to  the  front, 
and  the  Moor  and  the  Jew  are  combining  to 
construct  the  Alhambra.  Read  your  Washington 
Irving  £»  ^ 

When  Venice  built  her  Ghetto  she  planted  the 
germs  of  decay. 

Power  moved  on,  and  Granada  was  the  capital 
of  the  world. 

In  that  unforgettable  year,  Fourteen  Hundred 
Ninety-two,  we  find  Columbus,  the  Genoese, 
writing  to  Queen  Isabella  this  letter  which  is  now 
in  our  possession:  “ Now  that  you  have  succeeded 
in  driving  the  Jews  from  Spain,  I make  bold  to 
call  your  attention  to  my  own  petty  affairs,”  etc. 
C.  Alas,  the  pretty  compliment  of  Columbus,  de- 
signed for  the  shell-like  ear  of  Isabella,  was  true. 
She  had  succeeded  in  driving  the  Jews  from  Spain, 
and  already  Spain  was  where  Memphis  stood  when 
the  air  got  so  full  of  patchouli  that  Moses  had  to  go. 

Imagine,  if  you  please,  some  satrap  writing  a 
letter  to  Pharaoh  congratulating  him  thus:  “Now 
that  you  have  succeeded  in  driving  the  Jews  from 
Egypt,”  etc.,  etc. 

12 


WHEN  Torquemada  made  the  gutters  of 
Granada  run  ankle-deep  with  the  blood 
of  Jews,  Holland  opened  wide  her  doors  to  the 
refugees 

And  as  Spain  declined,  Holland  grew  great. 

The  center  of  the  stage  shifts  to  Amsterdam.  From 
Sixteen  Hundred  for  nearly  a hundred  years 
Holland  was  the  Schoolmaster  of  the  world. 
Holland  taught  England  how  to  read  and  write, 
how  to  print  and  bind  books  and  how  to  paint 
pictures  &+■ 

In  Sixteen  Hundred  Nine  England  was  a pioneer 
country,  forging  to  the  front  in  a rude  and  crude 
way.  She  had  the  ambition  and  the  restless  desire 
of  youth.  But  Holland  had  the  art,  the  education, 
the  philosophy — and  the  money. 

In  portraiture  Holland  struck  thirteen.  The  work 
done  by  Rembrandt,  Rubens  and  Frans  Hals 
stands  supreme  today,  even  after  these  three 
hundred  years. 

Art  is  bom  of  the  surplus  that  business  men 
accumulate.  The  business  men  of  Holland  were 
favorable  to  the  portrait-painter.  He  immortalized 
many  of  them  on  canvas,  and  they  live  for  us  only 
because  some  great  artist  painted  their  pictures. 
The  Plantins  of  Antwerp  and  Amsterdam,  the 

13 


great  bookmakers,  were  then  getting  underway. 
C In  those  days  a printer  was  somebody.  Printers 
went  into  the  business  in  order  to  express  their 
ideas.  The  very  word  “ compositor  ” carries  the 
thought.  The  man  composed  his  mind  and  set  up 
his  thoughts  in  type  at  the  same  time.  Peter 
Plantin  was  a printer.  He  also  was  a great  geogra- 
pher. He"  made  a close  and  complete  map  of  the 
world,  and  wrote  a book  on  the  formation  of  the 
earth 

THE  Plantin  print-shop  is  now  in  the  Plantin 
Musee  at  Antwerp,  the  property  of  the  state. 
In  this  most  rare  and  curious  old  printery  you  will 
get  the  books  and  maps  of  Peter  Plantin.  And  in 
one  of  these  maps  you  will  see  the  coast-line  of 
America.  The  country  was  very  narrow  according 
to  this  map,  which  was  made  in  Sixteen  Hundred 
Seven.  Piercing  the  land  were  inlets  leading  out 
into  great  lakes  or  bays;  and  just  on  the  other  side 
was  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  whole  country  was 
supposed  then  to  be  about  like  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama,  where  Balboa  stood  and  looked  over  to 
the  Pacific.  And  across  the  Pacific,  at  a distance  of 
less  than  half  the  way  across  the  Atlantic,  was 
India — India,  the  land  of  silks  and  teas — India, 
14 


the  land  of  gold  and  spices,  of  gems  and  em- 
broideries s— 

To  reach  this  land  of  wealth  without  going  around 
the  Southern  point  of  Africa  was  the  problem. 
Columbus  had  discovered  land,  but  had  failed  in 
his  attempt  to  find  the  passage  to  India,  and  had 
died  in  chains.  Americus  Vespucius  had  discovered 
the  continent,  but  had  been  unable  to  pierce  it 
with  his  ships.  The  Cabots  said  that  if  they  had 
had  a few  days  they  could  have  traversed  the  woods 
and  stood  upon  what  we  call  the  Alleghany  Moun- 
tains and  looked  down  on  the  peaceful  Pacific 
beyond.  The  Indians  had  told  them  they  could  do 
this.  But  three  difficulties  lay  in  the  way  of  getting 
valuable  information  from  the  Indians — one  was 
that  the  Indians  did  not  know,  the  second  was  that 
they  did  not  care,  and  the  third  was  that  the  white 
man  could  not  understand  them,  anyway. 

BUT  that  the  Pacific  was  just  “ over  there,”  as 
the  Indians  affirmed,  was  the  belief  of  the 
Plantins,  and  of  the  thinking  men  of  the  world  s* 
England,  young  and  lusty,  was  reaching  out  for 
this  get-rich-quick  route  to  China  and  India. 
Holland  knew  that  if  England  found  the  route  she 
would  claim  it  by  right  of  discovery,  and  might 

15 


block  it  against  the  world.  England  had  just 
wrecked  the  Spanish  Armada,  and  her  nose  was  in 
the  air.  C.  Holland  had  the  art  and  she  had  the 
books,  but  she  had  traded  brawn  for  brain,  so  she 
lacked  the  blood  that  makes  an  explorer.  What 
then?  Why,  hire  some  steeple-jack  of  the  sea  to 
find  this  quick  route. 

On  the  walls  of  the  Plantin  Musee,  close  by  the 
portrait  of  Peter  Plantin,  is  a picture  of  “ Heinrich 
Hudson,  the  Dutch  Explorer.”  Let  the  fact  be 
noted  that  Heinrich  Hudson  was  not  a Dutchman. 
He  was  born  in  England,  of  English  parents,  and 
his  remote  ancestry  was  Danish. 

HE  had  made  two  trips  to  Greenland  on  a 
commission  to  sail  around  the  north  end  of 
America  and  go  through  to  India.  He  had  reached 
as  high  a latitude  as  eighty  degrees  but  had  then 
been  turned  back  by  the  ice.  The  man  who  can 
sail  through  the  North  Pole  will  reach  the  Pacific 
and  India,  all  right. 

Hudson’s  feat  was  a disappointment,  but  the  wily 
Dutch  said,  we  work  by  elimination.  There  is  a 
middle  passage. 

When  the  Indians  had  told  of  the  sea  “ just  over 
there,”  they  had  in  mind  the  Great  Lakes. 

16 


What  more  natural  than  to  suppose  that  these 
lakes  had  an  outlet  on  the  western  side  into  the 
Pacific!  Indians  did  not  travel  far,  and  they  were 
not  interested  in  India.  The  name  “ Indian  ” was 
given  them  by  a worthy  explorer  who  taught  that 
he  had  discovered  India. 

Several  of  the  rich  merchants  of  Amsterdam  made 
up  a purse,  and  sent  a man  over  to  London  to  hire 
this  man  Henry  Hudson,  who  had  no  fear  of  the 
unknown  £-®» 

THEY  found  him  living  in  a boat-house  on  the 
Thames.  He  was  poor  in  purse,  and  without  a 
talent  for  getting  on,  but  he  was  full  of  the  enthu- 
siasm of  discovery.  €[  Out  in  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains one  can  find  the  typical  prospector,  who 
prospects  all  his  life  and  dies  at  last  alone  on  the 
mountain-side.  He  is  brave,  hopeful,  restless,  but 
failure  is  his  fate.  It  becomes  the  habit  of  his  life. 
C.  Hudson  was  living  with  his  wife  and  children 
in  what  would  have  been  absolute  want  were  it 
not  for  the  kind  hearts  of  the  ship-captains  whose 
boats  were  anchored  near. 

These  men  who  skirted  the  coast  were  sensible 
and  sane.  They  sailed  only  the  seas  that  were 
mapped,  and  always  were  in  sight  of  land. 


17 


Hudson  craved  the  unknown.  The  others  respected 
him — yes,  but  they  touched  their  foreheads  with 
the  tip  of  a forefinger  as  he  passed. 

Hudson  had  lost  money  for  everybody  who  had 
trusted  him.  Only  a year  before  this,  those  merry 
knights  who  founded  Jamestown  had  asked  him 
to  join  them,  but  Hudson  had  scorned  their  in- 
vitation 

His  wife  believed  in  him,  because  she  partook  of 
delusions,  as  loving  women  are  prone  to  do. 

UDSON  was  no  longer  young.  His  red  beard 
I was  streaked  with  white,  his  ruddy  face  was 
seamed  with  lines  of  care,  his  blue  eyes  had  lost  a 
little  of  their  luster  looking  out  on  the  snow  and 
ice  of  the  North. 

He  was  the  typical  stubborn,  freckled,  sandy 
Englishman  who  never  knows  when  he  is  whipped. 
€1  The  English  blood  carries  a mighty  persistent 
corpuscle 

The  modem  Briton  breed  is  made  up  of  a cross 
between  the  Saxon  and  the  Norse,  with  a dash  of 
the  Celt  to  give  it  a flavor. 

All  of  the  English  names  beginning  with  the  letter 
“ H ” have  come  down  from  the  Norse,  or  the 
Danish,  which  for  us  is  the  same  thing.  The  name 
18 


of  William  the  Conqueror  was  Hubba,  and  among 
his  followers  were  men  who  bore  the  following 
names:  Howells,  Hume,  Howard,  Hood,  Harkness, 
Hildebrand,  Holman,  Hughson,  Harding,  Holmes, 
Hudson,  Herbert,  Henderson,  Henry,  Hubbard. 
The  ending  “ -bert  ” is  a Saxon  ending;  but  the 
initial  “ H ” is  Norse.  It  was  the  introduction  of 
this  letter  “ H ” that  threw  the  English  tongue  in 
the  air,  and  the  sons  of  ’aughty  Halbion  ’ave  n’t 
yet  got  it  straightened  out,  you  know. 

Names  beginning  with  “ E,”  like  Ellison,  Eldridge, 
Ellsworth,  Elbert,  Elberta,  Ethelred,  Ethelbert, 
Ethelstan,  Ensign,  Ernest,  are  Saxon. 

Hudson  seemed  to  be  the  surviving  spirit  of  those 
“ wolves  of  the  sea,”  who  discovered  America 
about  the  year  One  Thousand,  and  built  a monu- 
ment or  two  along  the  coast  of  Rhode  Island  and 
then  sailed  away  on  adventures  new. 

They  knew  that  if  they  remained  they  would  have 
to  pay  taxes  to  the  Irish,  and  so  they  moved  on. 

E Hollanders  liked  Hudson,  and  as  he  was 


it  of  a job,  waiting  for  something  to  turn  up, 
he  hired  out  to  the  Dutch.  This  agent  was  acting 
for  the  Dutch  East  India  Company,  which  was  a 
trust  made  up  of  six  separate  companies,  one  in 


19 


each  city,  as  follows:  Amsterdam,  Zeeland,  Delft, 
Rotterdam,  Koom  and  Enkhuizen. 

An  agreement  was  drawn  up  and  signed.  Hudson’s 
wife  was  to  be  given  eight  hundred  guilders  at  once, 
and  if  her  husband  did  not  return  in  a year  she  was 
to  get  two  hundred  more. 

Beyond  this  Hudson  got  nothing  but  his  expenses. 
A guilder  was  what  to  us  would  be  forty  cents;  so 
we  see  that  the  price  Hudson  set  upon  his  own  life 
was  eighty  dollars.  This  was  the  sum  of  his 
life-insurance. 

If  he  found  the  passage,  however — ah,  now  we  are 
getting  it — if  he  found  the  passage,  it  was  to  be 
named  for  him,  and  he  was  to  be  the  first  governor 
of  the  territory. 

So  Hudson  bade  his  little  family  a stolid,  sailor 
good-by,  and  went  over  to  Holland  at  once  to 
receive  his  instructions,  the  syndic  taking  close  care 
that  the  man  did  not  escape. 

AT  Amsterdam  he  met  Peter  Plantin,  the  geog- 
L rapher,  and  a committee  of  merchants.  Hud- 
son knew  all  they  knew,  and  his  hope  was  high 
that  there  was  a passage  through  to  the  Pacific 
somewhere  between  latitude  thirty-eight  and  fifty 
degrees.  Captain  John  Smith  had  been  told  of  this 
20 


passage  by  the  Indians,  and  the  assurance  that  the 
sea  was  “ just  over  there  ” was  strong  in  all  hearts. 
He  was  also  very  sure  that  there  was  a way  to  go 
clear  around  America  to  the  North,  but  he  agreed 
with  the  Plantins  that  the  passage  would  always  be 
dangerous  on  account  of  the  cold  and  ice. 

A little  ship,  the  Half -Moon,  was  set  aside  for 
Hudson.  The  craft  suited  him.  It  was  staunch  and 
strong,  and  rode  the  waves  like  a cockle-shell. 

She  only  carried  a few  feet  of  water,  and  this  was 
well,  for  sand-bars  were  to  be  counted  on  in  making 
“ that  passage.” 

There  were  eighteen  men  in  the  crew — nine  Dutch- 
men and  nine  Englishmen.  Hudson  stood  out  for 
all  Englishmen,  claiming  he  must  have  men  who 
could  speak  his  tongue.  A two-days’  argument 
followed,  and  a compromise  was  effected. 

ON  April  Fourth,  Sixteen  Hundred  Nine,  the 
Half-Moon  hoisted  sail  and  slipped  slowly 
down  the  Zuyder  Zee. 

The  news  had  gone  out,  and  half  of  Amsterdam 
lined  the  wharves. 

The  Weeper’s  Tower  was  filled  with  relatives  of  the 
sailors.  No  one  wept  for  Hudson.  His  heart  did  not 
beat  one  throb  beyond  the  normal. 


21 


The  land  faded  from  view,  and  the  Half-Moon  was 
alone  on  the  waste  of  waters. 

The  log  of  the  voyage  still  exists.  It  is  written  in 
Dutch,  evidently  on  dictation  of  Captain  Henry 
Hudson,  who  now  was  “ Heinrich  Hudson,  a citizen 
of  the  Netherlands.”  All  of  which  was  evidently  a 
legal  expedient  designed  to  make  good  all  Dutch 
claims,  “ by  right  of  discovery.” 

Hudson  did  not  obey  orders  to  steer  straight  West 
for  America.  He  steered  for  the  Land  of  the  Mid- 
night Sun.  He  still  hoped  it  was  possible  to  strike 
here  a current  that  would  carry  him  straight  across 
to  the  Pacific,  d On  May  Nineteenth,  after  a sail 
of  forty-four  days,  the  crew  came  to  Hudson  in  a 
body  and  demanded  that  he  turn  back. 

One  man  had  died  and  the  sight  of  the  sun  that 
had  forgotten  how  to  set  was  on  their  nerves. 

THE  Captain  parleyed  with  them,  and  set  an 
hour  the  following  day  to  talk  it  over.  The  next 
day  the  weather  had  changed  for  the  better,  and 
the  spirits  of  the  men  rose.  Hudson  ordered  a 
double  ration  of  grog  for  all  hands,  got  out  his 
maps,  and  at  great  length  told  them  of  Captain 
John  Smith’s  idea  concerning  the  short  inland 
passage  that  lay  at  about  forty  degrees. 

22 


They  consented  to  sail  South,  but  they  must  get 
away  from  the  icebergs  and  the  terrible  land  where 
the  sun  never  went  down,  but  remained  a blood-red 
ball  in  the  heavens.  Hudson  started  a song  and  all 
joined  in  as  the  Half-Moon  headed  South. 
Sixty-four  days  they  sailed  and  sailed,  when  the 
wooded  shores  of  America  came  in  sight.  They 
entered  “ a fine  harbor,”  which  is  now  believed  to 
be  Casco  Bay  on  the  coast  of  Maine.  Here  they 
replaced  their  mainmast,  which  had  snapped  off 
short  in  a gale.  So  far  as  we  know  this  was  the  first 
attempt  to  utilize  the  spruce  pine  of  New  England 
for  the  uses  of  civilized  man. 

THIS  beautiful  bay  was  tempting.  They  put 
out  two  small  boats  and  skirted  it  carefully 
for  signs  of  an  inlet.  They  killed  a deer,  which  was 
the  first  fresh  meat  they  had  had  excepting  fish. 
CL  After  a week’s  rest,  they  again  put  out  to  sea 
and  skirted  the  coast  slowly  down  to  Cape  Cod. 
A map  was  made,  which  reveals  the  coast-line 
fairly  well;  but  in  some  way  Boston  Harbor  was 
missed,  perhaps  because  the  gilded  dome  of  the 
State  House  was  not  there  to  welcome  them.  They 
sailed  past  Sandy  Hook,  giving  only  a casual  look 
at  the  inlet. 


23 


The  Half -Moon  reached  Delaware  Bay  and  entered, 
but  the  signs  of  an  inlet  were  not  propitious,  and 
Hudson  decided  he  would  go  North  and  examine 
the  coast  with  greater  care.  On  the  morning  of 
September  Second,  Sixteen  Hundred  Nine,  he 
dropped  anchor  in  what  we  now  call  the  Horse- 
Shoe  of  Sandy  Hook.  From  here  he  put  out  with  a 
small  boat  and  three  sailors. 

THE  log  reports,  “ found  a good  entrance  be- 
tween two  headlands.”  A drawing  is  then 
given,  which  beyond  a doubt  is  “ The  Narrows.” 
Hudson  was  at  home  on  the  open  sea,  but  here  he 
moved  with  great  caution.  He  feared  running  his 
ship  upon  the  sands  or  rocks,  and  so  we  find  him 
going  ahead  in  a small  boat,  with  the  Half-Moon 
trailing  along  slowly,  as  he  swings  his  hat  and 
signals  her. 

He  passed  Staten  Island.  Next  he  reached  Manhat- 
tan. Here  he  put  ashore  on  the  shelving  beach.  He 
drew  the  boat  up,  and  planted  the  flag  of  the 
Netherlands  on  about  what  is  now  Twenty-six 
Broadway  so  so 

Then  he  moved  on  up  the  river  to  a point  where 
“ hills  are  straight  and  the  waters  deep.”  This  was, 
beyond  doubt,  the  Palisades. 

24 


Beyond,  the  river  widened  and  ahead  was  the 
clear,  open,  placid  waters.  They  came  to  the  Cats- 
kills, and  two  men  were  sent  ashore  “ to  climb 
the  highest  hill  and  the  highest  tree  they  could 
find,  and  look  for  the  Pacific  Ocean.” 

The  men  were  gone  overnight,  but  came  back 
reporting  only  mountains  and  woods  beyond.  The 
Pacific  Ocean  discovered  by  Balboa  twenty  years 
before  was  not  in  sight.  C.  Bill  Nye  once  told  us,  that 
Heinrich  Hudson  had  nearly  reached  Albany  before 
he  made  the  startling  discovery  that  the  river  upon 
which  he  was  sailing  bore  the  same  name  as  himself. 

THIS  was  a lapse  on  the  part  of  Bill.  The  fact  is, 
Hudson  knew  the  name  of  the  river  very  soon 
after  passing  the  toe  of  Manhattan’s  Isle,  for  he 
had  written  in  plain  letters  on  the  map  as  he 
sailed,  “ Hudson’s  River.” 

He  felt  sure  he  had  found  the  long-looked-for 
passage,  and  remembering  the  promise  of  his  em- 
ployers that  the  passage  should  bear  his  name, 
he  wrote  it  down.  C.  He  reached  the  present  site 
of  Albany  and  remained  a week  in  the  vicinity, 
carefully  exploring  the  banks  of  the  river  for  an 
inlet.  Then  he  sorrowfully  turned  the  prow  of  the 
Half-Moon  to  the  South. 


25 


John  Smith  was  wrong;  the  Indians  were  wrong; 
Henry  Hudson  was  wrong — the  voyage  was  a 
failure  £•» 

Already  signs  of  autumn  were  in  the  air,  and  the 
leaves  were  turning  to  gold.  It  would  not  do  to 
try  to  winter  here — the  Half -Moon  must  sail  back 
to  Amsterdam  and  frankly  report  failure. 

On  the  way  down  the  river  there  were  many 
Indians  to  be  seen  along  the  banks.  The  news  of 
the  strange  ship  had  evidently  gone  out  and  the 
red  men  were  more  than  curious. 

T TERE  was  the  first  ship  to  stretch  her  sails  on 
I X this  mighty  river,  that  had  existed  here  for 
ten  thousand  years  or  more. 

Hudson  drew  in  to  the  shore  near  the  present  site 
of  Poughkeepsie,  and  after  much  signaling  and 
beckoning  the  Indians  came  near  enough  to  be 
spoken  to.  But  alas!  they  spoke  neither  “ Anglaise,” 
Dutch,  nor  French.  Hudson  made  the  universal 
sign  of  hunger,  and  this  was  responded  to  at  once, 
which  gives  the  lie  to  that  popular  saying  that 
“ the  only  good  Indian  is  a dead  Indian.” 

The  squaws  brought  parched  com,  dried  venison, 
beans,  pumpkins  and  wild  grapes.  They  also  brought 
oysters,  and  “ speckled  fish  not  of  a salt-sea  kind.” 
26 


These  were  doubtless  brook-trout.  €[  Next  they 
cooked  a dog  in  honor  of  the  great  White  Chief. 
C In  return,  Hudson  and  his  men  gave  the  Indians 
knives,  beads  and  colored  strips  of  cloth. 

There  was  much  attempt  at  talk  and  both  sides 
made  long  orations,  but  to  small  purpose,  since 
the  interpreter  was  not  yet. 


T Hudson  was  working  for  was  to  get  the 


lfidence  of  the  Indians  so  they  would 
give  a clue  to  the  passage  to  the  Pacific. 

Hudson  reports  that  the  Indians  had  no  “ aqua 
vita,  nor  spiritus  frumenti.”  When  he  gave  them 
rum  they  drank  it  like  water,  and  “ soon  were  very 
merrie  and  next  mad.” 

Evidently  Hudson’s  men  had  imbibed,  too,  for 
two  of  his  sailors  lured  a squaw  into  a smallboat 
and  were  about  to  fetch  her  aboard  the  Half-Moon. 
Hudson  saw  the  commotion  among  the  Indians 
and  headed  off  his  reckless  sailors.  He  broke  an 
oar  over  the  head  of  one  John  Coleman  before  he 
could  get  the  woman  safely  back  to  land.  As  rep- 
aration for  her  injured  feelings,  Hudson  presented 
her  his  official  red  coat  with  brass  buttons  and 
gilt  braid,  which  he  had  intended  to  wear  on  the 
day  the  complete  passage  to  the  Pacific  was  made. 


27 


The  Indians  had  now  lost  their  respect  for  the 
white  men,  since  several  of  the  sailors  had  stolen 
all  the  furs  and  skins  they  could  lay  their  hands  on. 

HUDSON  now  saw  nothing  to  do  but  sail  for 
home.  The  Indians  followed  down  the  river, 
and  along  the  route  arrows  occasionally  skimmed 
the  air  too  close  to  the  sailors  for  comfort. 

Near  Manhattan  the  Mohicans  “ put  out  in  a 
multitudinary  swarm  in  hollow  logs,  and  surrounded 
the  good  ship,  the  Half-Moon,  and  the  sailors  had 
to  fight  for  their  lives.  Then  for  the  first  time  they 
had  to  use  fire-arms.  It  is  feared  some  Indians  were 
killed.  Straightway  the  Half-Moon  put  for  open 
sea,  having  been  in  land-locked  waters  for  the 
space  of  a full  month.” 

The  Half -Moon  had  strong  breezes  from  the  West 
and  made  fast  time  homeward  She  dropped 
anchor  in  the  harbor  of  Dartmouth,  England,  on 
November  Seventh.  Hudson  made  haste  to  go  to 
London  and  see  his  family,  before  he  went  to 
Holland  to  report  to  his  employers. 

In  December,  we  find  Hudson  again  full  of  hope 
and  sure  that  “at  a point  about  sixty  degrees 
North  of  the  coast  of  the  New  World  the  passage 
to  India  will  be  found  peradventure  of  a doubt.” 
28 


IT  was  a gamble — the  Dutch  vs.  Fate.  The  odds 
were  big.  If  the  passage  were  found  untold 
fortunes  awaited. 

Another  ship  was  fitted  out  at  greater  cost.  She 
was  called  the  Discoverie  and  her  “double  plank- 
ings were  made  so  to  withstand  the  strongest 
crush  of  ice.”  She  carried  a crew  of  twenty-nine  men. 
On  April  Seventeenth,  Sixteen  Hundred  Ten,  she 
sailed  away.  She  reached  that  marvelous  body  of 
water  which  we  know  as  Hudson’s  Bay. 

Inland  they  sailed  for  a thousand  miles.  Here  was 
salt  water  all  the  time ; while  the  puny  little  Hudson 
River  ran  fresh  water  a day’s  journey  from  the  sea. 

Heinrich  Hudson  was  now  so  sure  he  had  found 
the  prize  passage  to  India  that  he  refused  to  sail 
for  home  when  the  first  nipping  frosts  arrived. 

The  crew  went  into  winter  quarters. 

Game  was  plentiful,  but  the  sailors  were  afraid  to 
venture  far  inland  “ for  fear  of  sirens  whose  songs 
could  be  plainly  heard,  and  goblins  that  flitted 
everywhere  over  the  ice.” 

THE  dark,  cold  winter  dragged  its  long,  slow 
length  past.  Ice  began  to  melt  and  move. 

By  May  the  ship  was  free,  Several  of  the  crew  were 
sick  with  scurvy.  Four  had  died.  Hudson,  himself, 

29 


had  been  sick,  but  with  spring  his  spirits  arose  and 
he  grew  better.  There  is  nothing  so  hygienic  as  hope. 
He  announced  his  intention  to  press  on  to  the 
West  and  explore  every  inlet  until  he  had  found 
the  one  that  opened  out  upon  the  Pacific  Ocean. 
The  crew  demurred  — another  winter  and  they 
would  all  be  dead.  They  must  make  for  home  at 
once,  for  there  was  doubt  as  to  whether  they  could 
now  even  find  the  passage  out  to  the  Atlantic, 
much  less  to  the  Pacific.  Hudson  sought  to  use  his 
authority 

He  was  disarmed  and  declared  insane. 

He  was  given  the  privilege  of  being  put  afloat  in 
a boat,  or  of  sailing  for  home.  He  chose  the  open 
boat.  And  he  and  his  son  John,  aged  sixteen,  and 
seven  others  were  sent  adrift  with  provisions  to 
last  a month.  They  were  given  guns  and  ammu- 
nition. C The  Discoverie  hoisted  sail,  and  left  the 
invincible  master  on  that  trackless  inland  sea, 
skirted  by  a country  that  was  seemingly  desolate 
and  without  inhabitants. 

THE  Discoverie  reached  Amsterdam  in  October, 
and  the  mutineers  told  their  tale.  They  were 
arrested,  tried,  convicted — and  pardoned. 

They  made  it  appear  that  they  wished  only  to 
30 


save  the  ship  and  report  to  the  owners.  Their  frank- 
ness saved  their  lives. 

The  Discoverie  could  have  been  sent  back  after 
Hudson,  but  there  was  no  one  to  captain  the  ship, 
and  Heinrich  Hudson  was  left  to  his  fate.  The 
mutineers  brought  back  a map  of  “ Hudson’s  Bay.” 
Traced  across  the  map  in  bold  letters  was  the  name 
of  the  dauntless  discoverer. 

What  was  the  fate  of  Hudson,  his  son,  and  the 
loyal  seven  who  stood  by  him? 

No  one  knows — not  a sign  ever  came  from  them  in 
any  way 

Their  little  craft  may  have  foundered  and  all  been 
drowned  before  reaching  shore,  on  the  same  day 
the  Discoverie  sailed. 

They  may  have  lingered  on  for  another  winter 
and  died  of  cold,  starvation  and  disease. 

They  may  have  been  murdered  by  the  Indians, 
They  may  have  fallen  in  with  Indians,  been  kindly 
welcomed,  settled  down  to  make  the  best  of  a bad 
situation,  and  grown  old,  babbling  to  their  neigh- 
bors of  strange  sights  and  scenes  they  had  known 
years  and  years  before,  across  a trackless  waste 
of  water,  to  the  East. 

No  ships  came  that  way  from  Holland  for  thirty 
years 


31 


The  Netherlands  had  given  up  the  quest,  and  the 
lives  of  nine  men  are  things  too  small  to  disturb 
a nation,  especially  if  the  men  be  foreigners. 

ND  as  for  England,  she  had  never  missed  her 
jLjl  Henry  Hudson — only  his  wife  and  children 
mourned  him.  And  their  grief  did  not  really  count 
in  a world  where  woe  is  common  and  the  tears  of 
women  are  nothing  strange.  Women  were  bom  to 
weep  zo 

But  the  shrewd  Dutch  merchants  remembered 
Hudson’s  River  and  Manhattan  Isle,  and  there, 
where  Hudson  had  planted  the  flag  of  the  Nether- 
lands they  founded  a city. 

And  they  called  it  New  Amsterdam. 

Henry  Hudson  sought  for  one  thing.  He  found 
another.  It  is  ever  so.  And  the  tide  of  wealth  and 
power  ebbed  from  Amsterdam  to  London. 

Then  from  London  to  New  Amsterdam,  which 
we  now  call  New  York. 

And  behold  New  York  as  the  financial  center  of 
the  world,  with  her  storied  Wall  Street  on  the  very 
site  of  the  shelving  beach  where  trod  the  feet  of 
Henry  Hudson. 

And  the  tide  of  Empire  still  surges  toward  the 
setting  sun,  with  New  York  as  the  great  central 
32 


gateway  to  America,  the  land  of  Promise.  Did 
Henry  Hudson  live  and  die  in  vain? 

History  says,  No! 

And  the  morning  sun,  smiting  the  Palisades,  and 
gilding  them  with  his  glory,  says,  No ! 

And  a city  of  four  million  people,  a powerful,  rest- 
less and  unfolding  city,  immense  in  her  possi- 
bilities, where  nothing  is,  but  all  things  are  be- 
coming, pays  her  loyal,  loving  tribute  to  Henry 
Hudson,  and  declares  out  of  his  failure  sprang 
success  and  his  memory  shall  not  be  as  that 


of  one  whose  name  is  writ  in  water. 


33 


‘ ' ***  ' iS!^  * 4.e*  ‘ *«u  ’ &?*  #?* 

w . w . Vfi' , n5j» . w . <w , 'v:  • : s* . • ••  ■ 


MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

A GREAT  SPIRITUAL  SCOUT 


IERE  is  a fourth  dimension  of 
thought.  There  are  rare  moments 
in  life  when  the  latencies  of  the 
soul  converge  and  blend  in  a tran- 
sient state  of  consciousness;  when 
the  trickling  stream  of  thought 
gushes  over  the  obstructing  delta  of  Space,  Time 
and  Circumstance  and  mingles  with  the  Infinite 
Sea  beyond.  It  is  at  such  moments  that  we  catch 
glimpses  of  things  that  threaten  sanity.  We  are 
dazzled  by  an  influx  of  light,  of  feeling,  of  knowl- 
edge. Personality  dwindles  to  an  infinitesimal  point. 
We  see  ourselves  objectively,  as  independent  objects 
in  space  and  time,  like  a clock  ticking  on  the  shelf 
or  the  moon  in  the  sky.  We  have  a feeling  that  we 
have  been  everywhere,  but  no  particular  where. 
We  grope  back  to  the  terrestrial,  rejoicing  that  the 
ego  has  not  been  lost  in  that  momentary  vision 
of  Infinite  Being. 

34 


In  that  shining  ether-world  whose  pulsing  waves 
flow  through  the  brain-cells  like  light  passing 
through  crystal,  dwell  the  gods  of  life,  the  Fates 
that  dominate  our  lives.  Inflexible,  imperturbable, 
seeing  but  not  feeling,  holding  within  their  grasp 
the  threads  of  human  destiny — the  silken  threads 
that  hold  our  souls  in  leash — these  mute  gods 
rule  for  aye.  They  understand  and  mock.  They 
hear,  but  their  lips  are  curled  in  scorn.  The  Greeks 
placed  them  on  Olympus,  the  Scandinavians  in 
Asgard,  and  the  modem  mystic  places  them  in 
the  fourth  dimension  of  thought.  C,  There  are  some 
choice  spirits  who  seem  to  have  lived  all  their 
lives  in  this  subtle  sphere.  They  walk  the  earth 
and  their  feet  are  clay,  but  their  heads  are  ranged 
with  the  stars.  Their  lungs  are  forever  inflated 
with  a divine  ether.  We  little  workaday  beings 
who  run  around  their  legs,  like  mice  around  the 
base  of  the  Colossus  of  Rhodes,  draw  in  the  mias- 
matic vapors  of  planetary  life  and  are  content. 
We  sit  in  chairs  and  stare  at  a blank  wall ; they  sit 
before  an  open  door.  Our  vision  is  bounded  by 
the  horizon;  for  them  there  is  no  horizon.  We  listen 
to  the  guttural  of  external  life;  they  catch  the 
vibrations  of  Law,  and  report  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
eons  £•» 


35 


THE  materialist  places  his  mind  in  the  uni verse; 

the  mystic  places  the  universe  in  his  mind. 
Plotinus,  Schopenhauer,  Emerson,  Maeterlinck, 
we  can  hardly  think  of  as  ordinary  mortals.  They 
seem  with  us,  but  not  of  us.  To  come  under  the 
influence  of  their  clairvoyant  gaze,  to  follow  them 
in  their  vertiginous  flights  above  the  striated  world 
of  matter  and  motion,  is  to  experience  simultan- 
eously those  sensations  of  exaltation  and  depression 
which  one  feels  in  rising  in  a balloon — a sinking  at 
the  heart,  a lightness  of  the  head.  There  is  a 
sundering  of  the  ligatures  that  bind  us  to  the 
familiar.  The  centripetal  forces  tug  at  our  feet, 
and  the  centrifugal  forces  tug  at  our  head.  The 
clogging  clay  wars  against  the  smiling,  sneering 
stars  that  summon  from  overhead.  The  welding 
Relative  is  lost  in  a solvent  Absolute.  The  indi- 
vidual withers,  and  his  soul  is  more  and  more.  As 
a particle  of  salt  is  dissolved  in  water,  so  is  a 
particular  fact  dissolved  in  its  eternal  Idea  in  such 
hours.  The  succession  of  days  and  nights  collapses 
like  a portable  drinking-cup.  Time  dwindles  to  a 
point,  matter  runs  to  fluid  wastes,  the  stable  un- 
moors and  drifts  away  like  cloud-fleece  over  a 
level  summer  sea. 

The  world  is  my  thought,  is  the  message  of 
36 


Wisdom  and  Destiny.  The  Belgian’s  being  has  been 
touched  by  some  divine  despair.  But  he  has  found 
surcease  within  He  has  diked  his  soul  against 
the  encroaching,  flooding  days,  and  reclaimed 
from  the  wild  and  lawless  sea  of  circumstance  a 
verdant  land  of  beauty.  Like  Kubla  Khan,  he  has 
decreed  a lordly  pleasure-house  in  a mystic  Xan- 
adu. From  the  granite  wall  of  limitations  he  has 
hewn  a castle  with  turrets  forever  bathed  in  an 
opiate  moonshine,  and  around  which  the  eagles 
circle  and  call.  €[  The  world  passes  through  his 
brain  and  even  the  dross  is  purified.  He  will  see 
beauty  in  a beetle  on  the  wall. 

He  will  catch  the  days  with  their  griefs  and  the 
nights  with  their  lamentations,  and  extract  the 
beautiful  as  gold  is  extracted  from  the  mud  in  the 
pan.  For  the  soul  of  the  seer  is  alchemic.  He  will 
turn  compost  into  beaten  gold.  He  will  refine 
smudge  and  smut.  From  the  lees  of  the  wine  of 
pleasure  he  will  brew  a heady  wisdom.  He  has  an 
elfin  band  at  his  beck  and  call.  They  labor  by  day 
and  night  in  the  smithy  of  his  unconscious  being. 
There  they  forge  the  weapons  for  his  conscious 
hours.  There  they  mold  helmet  and  shield  and 
panoply.  His  mind  is  a dragnet,  and  all  is  fish  that 
comes  to  it. 


37 


We  are  bolder  than  we  know,  and  our  actions 
ride  us  to  the  zenith  of  the  Invisible.  We  are  wiser 
than  we  know,  and  our  wisdom  outruns  the  cen- 
turies. Each  man  is  an  epitome  of  all  men.  Every 
bottom  is  a false  bottom.  What  we  call  limitation 
is  lack  of  perception,  and  when  we  say  we  are 
undone  we  mean  we  have  capitulated.  For  the 
seer  — for  Maeterlinck,  Plotinus  and  Emerson — 
there  are  no  limitations,  and  capitulation  they  do 
not  know.  They  build  the  world  anew  every  day. 
Each  night  they  slough  off  a limitation.  Each 
day  they  build  a house,  but  they  move  perpetually. 
They  baffle  the  best-laid  plans  of  demons  and  gods 
by  meeting  demon  and  god  halfway.  The  slings 
and  arrows  of  fortune  pierce  their  souls,  but  the 
tips  are  anointed  with  chrism  of  wisdom.  They 
dice  with  life-in-death,  as  does  the  grief-crazed 
mortal,  but  they  play  with  loaded  dice.  They  have 
lived  imaginatively  all  men’s  lives,  and  fear  no 
disaster  «•* 

MAETERLINCK  would  have  us  know  we  can 
not  escape  the  predestined.  Tomorrow  is  a 
curtained  seduction,  but  it  stands  sure.  The  last 
day  shall  reveal  what  the  first  day  purposed.  The 
years  walk  a lockstep.  Each  thing  breeds  its  own 
38 


manner  of  death.  And  the  trump  of  doom  shall 
reveal  the  meaning  of  the  prelude  in  Chaos.  The 
individual  is  held  in  the  rigid  grooves  of  fate,  and 
what  is  to  be  will  come.  Any  other  doctrine  is 
blasphemous,  or  worse,  ridiculous.  We  are  gib- 
beted on  Law.  We  are  spitted  on  the  Inevitable 
and  our  souls  dangle  over  Death. 

It  is  good  that  to  most  of  us  the  future  is  a 
sealed  book.  The  past  is  ever  changing  in  the  kalei- 
doscope of  memory;  the  future  alone  is  irrevo- 
cable. The  day  of  our  passing  is  appointed;  and 
life  itself  is  but  an  oblation  to  death.  On  the  altars 
of  the  Hours  we  offer  ourselves  up.  The  soul  is 
but  an  eddy  in  the  great  world-stream,  and  the 
eddy  has  its  appointed  end  as  surely  as  the  stream. 
A mind  that  could  have  grasped  the  links  in  the 
chain  of  causation  of  which  Lincoln,  the  Civil  War 
and  Wilkes  Booth  were  but  the  shadows,  could 
have  predicted,  at  Lincoln’s  birth,  the  tragedy  in 
Ford’s  Theater. 

History  is  Force  dressed  up.  The  curvetings  of 
Law  are  beyond  the  individual  stay,  and  the 
manner  of  the  death  of  nations  is  dependent  on 
the  manner  of  their  birth.  We  are  puppets  on  an 
unknown  stage,  infusoria  gyrating  aimlessly  in 
an  unsounded  sea,  midges  sporting  our  day  in  the 

39 


sun  of  thought,  atoms  of  desire,  motes  of  the 
Eternal  Energy.  And  Man  bloweth  where  Law 
listeth.  So  says  Maeterlinck. 

THE  great  problem  of  human  evil  has  con- 
fronted Maeterlinck,  as  it  has  confronted 
Tolstoy  and  Ibsen.  But  the  demands  of  the  Sphinx 
can  not  ruffle  the  feathers  of  the  Belgian  as  it  has 
those  of  the  Norwegian  and  the  Russ.  A mild  but 
effulgent  serenity  swims  from  the  pages  of  Wisdom 
and  Destiny  and  The  Treasure  of  the  Humble. 
The  misery,  the  evil,  the  injustice  of  the  world 
trouble  him  as  the  winds  trouble  the  wave.  They 
may  lash  the  surface  into  huge,  tumbling  billows, 
but  in  the  depths  there  reigns  a tense  placidity. 
Serenity  is  bom  of  insight,  and  insight  must  beget 
a contempt  of  the  temporal  order — that  order 
begun  in  desire  and  which  is  destined  to  end  in 
despair 

“ Today,  misery  is  the  disease  of  mankind,  as 
disease  is  the  mystery  of  mankind,”  says  Maeter- 
linck. Man  tosses  around  on  his  bed  of  pain,  and 
his  prayers  are  hurled  back  as  echo  from  the  stars. 
He  builds  and  he  builds,  and  his  work  is  swept 
away  like  the  beaver’s  dam.  His  soul,  is  impounded 
in  clay,  wriggles  toward  freedom  only  to  discover 
40 


that  it  has  been  wriggling  out  of  a strait-jacket  into 
a winding-sheet.  He  builds  a grandiose  tomorrow 
on  the  ruins  of  today,  and  when  tomorrow  has  come 
and  gone  and  turned  ghost  he  builds  again.  His 
Golden  Age  always  lies  in  the  future.  He  builds  altar 
and  capitol,  and  dedicates  his  soul  to  prayer.  He 
sulks  and  begs  and  defies  and  grovels,  and  Death 
circles  like  a kite  above  his  carrion-clay.  He  believes 
he  is  going  straight  to  his  goal,  straight  to  that  far- 
off  divine  event  which  Hope  has  builded  in  the 
azure  future.  But  there  is  no  forward  or  backward 
in  life.  Nature  has  no  straight  lines.  Rhythm,  un- 
dulation, periodicity  are  the  laws  that  govern 
motion.  The  history  of  one  day  is  the  history  of 
all  days,  and  he  who  builds  on  the  shifting  sands 
of  the  temporal  builds  futilely. 

IT  is  this  Heraclitean  vision  of  human  life  that 
has  obsessed  the  mind  of  Maeterlinck.  It  is  this 
Horla  that  has  gripped  his  soul  in  its  lean  and  icy 
fingers.  In  those  strange  little  dramas  that  he  has 
given  us,  and  which  are  a fitting  introduction  to 
his  Wisdom  and  Destiny,  we  read  the  rending  con- 
flicts that  have  cleft  the  soul  of  this  transcriber 
of  visions  ^ 

Are  they  human,  these  peaked  and  emaciated 

41 


figures  that  he  has  silhouetted  on  his  background 
of  night?  The  moral  world  is  but  a thin  crust  that 
has  formed  over  the  rolling  lava-streams  of  ele- 
mental passion.  The  wan,  drawn  figures  of  the  plays 
sport  upon  this  dangerous  surface  unmindful  of  the 
intoning  flood  beneath.  Is  it  play?  Or  are  the  antics 
of  these  creatures  the  death-squirmings  of  a 
decadent  race?  A dank  and  fetid  air  blows  from 
the  surface  of  life.  Is  this  endless  and  purposeless 
gambol  in  Being  an  illusion,  a dream  in  the  mind  of 
a fallen  god  who  sates  himself  with  sleep  while  his 
brain-puppets  play  out  the  farce?  The  wilful  days, 
that  image  our  despair  bring  no  answer.  Those 
pallid  lights  set  in  a naked,  frosty  heaven  have  no 
word  for  us.  The  soul  of  man  preserves  a crypt-like 
silence.  His  heart  wreathes  Hope  with  the  bay-leaf 
and  crowns  Memory  with  thorns.  But  it  has  no 
answer.  Our  brain-cells  are  catacombs  where  lie  our 
ancestors  embalmed  in  silence.  They  answer  not. 
d The  web  of  life  is  woven  of  contingency  and 
necessity,  and  the  inevitable  and  the  unknown 
ambuscade  us  at  every  turn.  This  endless  willing, 
this  eternal  upswirl  of  souls  from  the  abysms  of 
non-being  into  the  glare  of  a frowsy  day;  this 
ceaseless  regalvanizing  of  corpses;  these  ambling, 
jigging  mummies  that  are  tossed  from  Eternity 
42 


into  Time  and  from  Time  back  into  Eternity; 
these  sweating  pack-mules  saddled  with  the  rubbish 
of  decayed  cycles  and  ancient  durations;  these 
crumbling  tabernacles  of  clay — some  demons, 
striated  with  their  sins;  some  saints,  dragging  ball 
and  chain  of  ancestral  crime  up  the  steep  Cordilleras 
of  aspiration;  young  gods  with  unexpanded  wings, 
predestined  for  Walhalla,  toiling  in  the  galleys  of 
this  Toulon;  Calibans  wallowing  in  the  gutters 
that  rut  their  imaginations;  and  never  an  end — 
the  same,  the  same  and  ever  the  same — how  shall 
we  fend  ourselves  ’gainst  this  wreckful  siege  asks 
Maeterlinck 

IT  is  in  his  soul  that  he  has  found  the  refuge 
against  the  world  of  circumstance.  The  problem 
is  individual.  Social  schemes  for  the  regeneration 
of  mankind  only  aggravate  the  disease  from  which 
mankind  is  suffering.  The  deep-rooted  ills  of  man- 
kind can  not  be  cured  by  a poultice.  “ We  suffer 
little  from  suffering  itself;  but  from  the  manner 
wherein  we  accept  it  overwhelming  sorrow  may 
spring.”  This  is  the  keynote  of  his  message.  Mental 
attitude  is  everything.  The  gale  that  wrecks  the 
sneak-box  fills  the  sails  of  the  barkentine  and 
drives  her  toward  her  goal.  The  trifles  of  the  day 

43 


unnerve  most  of  us.  The  wise  man  quietly  ignores 
them.  Suffering  is  one-half  self-love  and  one-half 
hallucination.  Hallucination  is  the  normal  state  of 
man.  He  makes  up  his  mind  in  youth  to  whimper, 
and  whimper  he  does  to  the  end  of  his  days.  It  is  the 
future  that  affrights  him;  he  puts  into  a hypothe- 
tical tomorrow  all  the  ills  that  flesh  is  not  heir  to. 
From  the  murk  of  his  dreams  he  weaves  strange 
and  lurid  imps  of  evil.  What  is  this  future  we  fear? 
Is  it  anything  but  a psychic  jack-’o -lantern?  The 
future  is  the  avatar  of  the  past,  yesterday  resur- 
rected and  expanded,  Old  Time  with  a visor  on 
his  cap  to  hide  his  identity. 

For  the  seer  there  is  only  an  eternal  Present  that 
canopies  both  the  past  and  the  future.  What  did  n’t 
happen  yesterday  never  can  happen.  What  is  not 
feared  never  comes.  He  drains  the  minutes  of  their 
contents  as  they  pass.  He  substitutes  the  abstract 
for  the  concrete,  and  splashes  in  generalizations. 
No  time,  nor  place,  nor  circumstance  can  hold 
him.  He  knows  that,  like  Faust,  he  will  be  lost  if 
he  bid  any  one  thing  stay. 

The  vision  of  Maeterlinck  is  cosmic.  He  does 
not  contend  against  evil;  he  rejects  it  by  ac- 
cepting it.  He  lives  above  the  stews.  From  his 
citadel  of  spiritual  power  he  sends  forth  his  doves 
44 


and  they  come  back  laden  with  precious  secrets. 
His  soul  paces  the  ramparts  of  Time  and  Space.  He 
will  partake  of  all  things,  but  nothing  shall  claim 
him.  He  is  receptive,  but  unallied.  There  is  in  the 
soul  of  each  of  us,  Maeterlinck  tells  us,  a repellent 
center,  a magic  flame  ’round  which  the  moths  of 
circumstance  circle  only  to  singe  their  wings  or  be 
consumed.  Gusty  Chance  but  flings  the  fire  that 
bums  in  the  chalice  of  the  soul  farther  and  farther 
into  the  encircling  gloom.  The  wise  man  stands 
upon  the  marge  of  the  great  ocean  of  life,  and  fixes 
this  gaze  upon  the  tumbling,  seething,  undulating 
waters  that  stretch  away  to  an  illusive  horizon.  His 
ear  catches  the  hoarse  callings  of  expectancy  and 
the  deep  gutturals  of  defeat,  and  at  his  feet  there 
circle  and  surge  the  wrack  of  an  endless  futile 
labor.  He  is  not  disturbed.  He  sees  as  no  other  sees, 
the  tragedy,  the  comedy,  the  inutility  of  it  all. 
Darkness  he  sublimes  to  light,  despair  he  trans- 
mutes into  a stoic  defiance.  The  average  person 
sees  from  an  angle  of  personality.  The  sage  sees 
from  an  impersonal  center.  This  world  will  fawn 
at  his  feet  when  he  calls. 

In  the  august  and  significant  silences  of  the  soul, 
says  Maeterlinck,  is  bom  the  wisdom  that  baffles 
destiny.  Physical  pain  itself  must  cower  before 

45 


the  emancipated  mind.  Was  it  not  Socrates  who 
discoursed  on  immortality  while  he  was  stiffening 
in  death?  Did  not  Epicurus  in  his  mortal  agony 
preach  the  summum  bonum  to  his  disciples?  These 
silent  refuges  that  disease  and  death  stormed  in 
vain  were  wrought  out  in  the  spirit-sweat  of 
cloistral  hours;  it  is  here,  in  these  darkling  recesses 
of  the  soul,  in  the  encelled  silences,  that  the  real 
work  of  freedom  is  done;  it  is  here  that  rest  is  won 
from  the  clangorous  days,  and  the  balm  that  was  not 
in  Gilead  is  found.  We  reach  these  uplands  of  the 
spirit  by  infinite  petty  exertions,  by  threading 
our  way  through  the  labyrinthine  passes  of  whim 
and  impulse.  All  things  conspire  against  the  indi- 
vidual. There  is  a Nemesis  that  seeks  continually 
to  level  us  to  the  mediocre.  Those  ancients,  the 
vulgar  and  the  familiar,  would  scythe  us  to  their 
own  standards.  We  are  kneaded  in  the  common 
image,  and  our  days  are  gross.  We  are  relics 
of  the  dead,  effigies  of  the  past,  playthings  of 
ancestral  tendency.  All  things  pay  tribute  to  the 
sheeted,  slumbering  dead.  Yet  there  is  within  us 
the  spark  that  will  not  be  snuffed  out.  It  is  the 
I,  the  resistant  center,  the  undying  defiant.  It  is 
by  developing  the  Ego,  by  an  insistent  coddling  of 
Me,  that  we  attain  to  a sort  of  Buddhahood.  The 
46 


adolescent  Homunculus  of  Faust  was  Nietzsche’s 
Overman  in  the  ovum.  The  Infinite  is  hidden  in 
an  atom,  and  the  freeman  lies  quiescent  in  the 
slave.  Housed  and  kenneled  in  our  brains  there  is 
a cosmic  Self,  a greater,  grander,  universal  Self, 
distinct  and  other  than  the  hallucinated  micro- 
cosm that  sulks  and  whimpers  through  the  bogey- 
bogus  days  of  life. 

MAETERLINCK  gives  us  no  coward’s  message. 

Flight  is  not  self-mastery,  and  the  world  can 
not  be  subdued  to  the  individual’s  will  by  shun- 
ning its  blows.  We  master  fate  as  the  Japanese 
wrestler  bests  his  opponent — by  giving  way  at 
every  point.  We  should  not  battle;  we  should 
absorb.  There  is  no  way  yet  found  of  escaping  the 
ills  of  life.  The  world  is  a counsel  of  imperfection. 
The  trammel  and  the  bond  are  not  rejected  by  the 
seer.  He  must  have  ballast.  There  is  no  backstairs 
to  the  seventh  heaven  of  spiritual  complacency. 
He  knows  the  crepuscular  mood,  and  the  whirring 
pinions  of  the  Black  Bird  have  brushed  his  soul. 
Recomposition  is  the  law  of  life,  and  from  remorse 
and  despair  we  compound  the  nectars  of  wisdom. 
Fear  is  a brigand,  but  he  carries  a torch.  Snatch 
the  torch,  and  turn  it  on  his  face.  Beneath  the 

47 


visor  which  has  frightened  you  there  is  a smile. 
And  scuttle  the  past!  In  the  measure  that  a man 
allows  the  past  to  dominate  his  life,  in  that  measure 
will  the  future  obsess  him.  To  sit  down  by  the 
stream  of  Time  and  weep  over  the  gone-by  is 
worse  than  tragic ; it’s  comic. 

Embalm  the  past  in  a smile. 

Spinoza  said,  “ Nothing  shall  disturb  me,”  and 
nothing  did.  Pyrrho  said,  “ Nothing  is  true;  noth- 
ing is  untrue,”  and  he  died  in  peace.  Marcus 
Aurelius  said,  “ Nothing  matters,”  and  nothing 
did.  “ The  world  is  divine,”  chanted  Emerson, 
and  he  was  right.  “ The  world  is  evil  and  smells  of 
grave-mold,”  said  Schopenhauer,  and  he  was  right. 
“ Life  is  like  a comedy  by  Moliere,”  said  George 
Meredith.  And  Meredith  was  right. 

Each  brain  is  a premise.  Everything  depends  on 
the  point  of  view.  The  message  of  Maurice  Maeter- 
linck, like  Walt  Whitman’s,  is  whatever 
you  choose  to  read  into  it.  We  know  him 
for  a great  spiritual  scout. 


48 


' £?<* * *.e» 5 46  &W  £■?*  &+ ' 45* 
w . w . «5f g* . *afc» , nfc* . w , w . w . w . w 


INGERSOLL 

THE  REFORMER 


HE  world  is  really  getting  better. 
C.  We  are  gradually  growing  honest 
and  a few  men  everywhere,  even 
in  the  pulpit,  are  now  acknowledg- 
ing they  do  not  know  all  about 
everything.  There  was  little  hope 
for  the  race  so  long  as  an  individual  was  disgraced 
if  he  did  not  pretend  to  believe  a thing  at  which 
his  reason  revolted. 

We  are  simplifying  life — simplifying  truth.  The 
man  who  serves  his  fellow-men  best  is  the  one  we 
should  honor  most.  The  learned  man  used  to  be 
the  one  who  muddled  things,  who  scrambled 
thought,  who  took  reason  away,  and  instead 
thrust  upon  us  faith,  with  a threat  of  punishment 
if  we  did  not  accept  it,  and  an  offer  of  reward  if 
we  did  £•» 

We  have  now  discovered  that  the  so-called  learned 
man  had  no  authority,  either  for  his  threat  of 

49 


punishment  or  his  offer  of  reward.  Hypocrisy  will 
now  not  pass  current,  and  sincerity,  frozen  stiff 
with  fright,  is  no  longer  legal  tender  for  truth.  In 
the  frank  acknowledgment  of  ignorance  there  is 
much  promise.  The  man  who  does  not  know,  and 
is  not  afraid  to  say  so,  is  in  the  line  of  evolution. 
But  for  the  head  that  is  packed  with  falsehood  and 
the  heart  that  is  faint  with  fear,  there  is  no  hope. 
That  head  must  be  unloaded  of  its  lumber,  and  the 
heart  given  courage  before  the  march  of  progress 
can  begin. 

NOW  let  us  be  frank,  and  let  us  be  honest,  just 
for  a few  moments.  Let  us  acknowledge  that 
this  revolution  in  thought  that  has  occurred  during 
the  last  twenty-five  years  was  brought  about 
mainly  by  one  individual.  The  world  was  ripe  for 
this  man’s  utterance,  otherwise  he  would  not  have 
gotten  the  speaker’s  eye.  A hundred  years  before 
we  would  have  snuffed  him  out  in  contumely  and 
disgrace.  But  men  listened  to  him  and  paid  high 
for  the  privilege.  And  those  who  hated  this  man  and 
feared  him  most  went,  too,  to  listen,  so  as  to  answer 
him  and  thereby  keep  the  planet  from  swinging 
out  of  its  orbit  and  sweeping  on  to  destruction 
Whenever  this  man  spoke,  in  towns  and  cities  or 
50 


country,  for  weeks  the  air  was  heavy  with  the 
smoke  of  rhetoric,  and  reasons,  soggy  and  solid, 
and  fuzzy  logic  and  muddy  proofs  were  dragged 
like  siege-guns  to  the  defense. 

THEY  dared  the  man  to  come  back  and  fight 
it  out.  The  clouds  were  charged  with  chal- 
lenges, and  the  prophecy  was  made  and  made 
again  that  never  in  the  same  place  could  this  man 
go  back  and  get  a second  hearing.  Yet  he  did  go 
back  year  after  year,  and  crowds  hung  upon  his 
utterances  and  laughed  with  him  at  the  scarecrow 
that  had  once  filled  their  day-dreams,  made  the 
nights  hideous,  and  the  future  black  with  terror. 
Through  his  influence  the  tears  of  pity  put  out  the 
fires  of  hell;  and  he  literally  laughed  the  devil  out 
of  court.  This  man,  more  than  any  other  man  of 
his  century,  made  the  clergy  free.  He  raised  the 
standard  of  intelligence  in  both  pew  and  pulpit,  and 
the  preachers  who  denounced  him  most,  often 
were,  and  are,  the  most  benefited  by  his  work. 

THIS  man  was  Robert  G.  Ingersoll.  C[  On  the 
urn  that  encloses  his  ashes  should  be  these 
words:  “ Liberator  of  Men.”  When  he  gave  his 
lecture  on  “ The  Gods  ” at  Cooper  Union,  New 

51 


York  City,  in  Eighteen  Hundred  Seventy-two,  he 
fired  a shot  heard  ’round  the  world.  It  was  the 
boldest,  strongest  and  most  vivid  utterance  of  the 
century  «•» 

At  once  it  was  recognized  that  the  thinking  world 
had  to  do  with  a man  of  power.  Efforts  were  made 
in  dozens  of  places  to  bring  statute  law  to  bear  upon 
him,  and  the  State  of  Delaware  held  her  whipping- 
post in  readiness  for  his  benefit;  but  blasphemy 
enactments  and  laws  for  the  protection  of  the 
Unknown  were  inoperative  in  his  gracious  presence. 
C.  Ingersoll  was  a hard  hitter,  but  the  splendid 
good  nature  of  the  man,  his  freedom  from  all 
personal  malice,  and  his  unsullied  character  saved 
him,  in  those  early  days,  from  the  violence  that 
would  surely  have  overtaken  a smaller  person. 

rJGERSOLL  gave  superstition  such  a jolt  that  the 
consensus  of  intelligence  has  counted  it  out. 
Ingersoll  did  not  destroy  the  good — all  that  is 
vital  and  excellent  and  worthy  in  religion  we  have 
yet,  and  in  such  measure  as  it  never  existed  before. 
In  every  so-called  “ Orthodox  ” pulpit  you  can 
now  hear  sermons  calling  upon  men  to  manifest 
their  religion  in  their  work;  to  show  their  love  for 
God  in  their  attitude  toward  men;  to  gain  the 
52 


kingdom  of  heaven  by  having  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  in  their  own  hearts. 

Ingersoll  pleaded  for  the  criminal,  the  weak,  the 
defenseless  and  the  depraved.  Our  treatment 
toward  all  these  has  changed  marvelously  within  a 
decade.  When  we  ceased  to  believe  that  God  was 
going  to  damn  folks,  we  left  off  damning  them 
ourselves.  We  think  better  now  of  God  and  we 
think  better  of  men  and  women.  Who  dares  now 
to  talk  about  the  “ hopelessly  lost  ? ” 


OU  can  not  afford  to  indict  a man  who  prac- 


tised every  so-called  Christian  virtue,  simply 
because  there  was  a flaw  or  two  in  his  “ belief  ” — 
the  world  has  gotten  beyond  that.  Everybody 
now  admits  that  Ingersoll  was  every  whit  as  good 
a man  as  those  who  denounced  him  most.  His  life 
was  full  of  kind  deeds  and  generous  acts,  and  his 
daily  walk  was  quite  as  blameless  as  the  life  of  the 
average  priest  or  preacher. 

Those  who  seek  to  cry  Ingersoll  down  reveal  either 
density  or  malice.  He  did  a great  and  necessary 
work,  and  did  it  so  thoroughly  and  well  that  it  will 
never  have  to  be  done  again.  His  mission  was  to 
liberalize  and  to  Christianize  every  church  in 
Christendom;  and  no  denomination,  be  its  creed 


53 


ever  so  ossified,  stands  now  where  it  stood  before 
Ingersoll  began  his  crusade.  He  shamed  men  into 
sanity 

Ingersoll  uttered  in  clarion  tones  what  thousands 
of  men  and  women  believed,  but  dared  not  voice. 
He  was  the  spokesman  for  many  of  the  best  think- 
ers of  his  time.  He  abolished  fear,  gave  courage  in 
place  of  cringing  doubt,  and  lived  what  he  believed 
was  truth.  His  was  a brave,  cheerful  and  kind 
life.  He  was  loved  most  by  those  who  knew  him 
best,  for  in  his  nature  there  was  neither  duplicity 
nor  concealment.  He  had  nothing  to  hide.  We  know 
and  acknowledge  the  man’s  limitations,  yet  we 
realize  his  worth:  his  influence  in  the  cause  of 
simplicity  and  honesty  has  been  priceless. 

HE  dust  of  conflict  has  not  yet  settled;  pre- 


judice still  is  in  the  air,  but  time,  the  great 
adjuster,  will  give  Ingersoll  his  due.  The  history 
of  America’s  thought  evolution  can  never  be 
written  with  the  name  of  Ingersoll  left  out.  In  his 
own  splendid  personality  he  had  no  rivals,  no 
competitors.  He  stands  alone;  and  no  name  in 
liberal  thought  can  ever  eclipse  his.  He  prepared 
the  way  for  the  thinkers  and  the  doers  who  shall 
come  after,  and  in  insight  surpass  him,  reaching 


54 


spiritual  heights  which  he,  perhaps,  could  never 
attain.  This  earth  is  a better  place,  and  life  and 
liberty  are  safer  because  Robert  G.  Ingersoll  lived. 
C The  last  words  of  Ingersoll  were,  by  a strange 
coincidence,  the  dying  words  of  his  brother  Ebon : 
“ I am  better!” — words  of  hope,  words  of  assur- 
ance to  the  woman  he  loved. 

Sane  to  the  last!  And  let  us,  too,  hope  that  those 
dear  words  are  true  of  all  the  countless  dead. 


55 


EMERSON 

THE  SKEPTIC 


OU  are  spinning  like  bubbles  in 
a river,  you  know  not  whither  or 
whence,  aud  you  are  bottomed  and 
capped  and  wrapped  in  delusions,” 
says  Emerson  in  his  essay  on 
Montaigne  s—  «•» 

The  universe  at  any  given  moment  is  but  a dis- 
solving state  of  consciousness.  Behind  the  arras 
of  dreams  there  stands  a Dreamer,  and  that  there 
is  a Dreamer  and  a dream  are  all  the  skeptic  can 
affirm 

Skepticism  is  a system  of  arriving  at  provisional 
universals  by  skipping  the  particular.  It  holds  to 
no  one  thing,  but  affirms  an  All.  As  a particle  of 
salt  is  dissolved  in  water,  so  is  a particular  fact 
dissolved  in  its  eternal  Idea  in  the  mind  of  the  sage. 
Your  object  standing  there  in  space,  tangible  and 
movable,  has  no  more  substantiality  than  the 
gorgeous  color-bands  woven  by  sunken  Autumn 
56 


suns.  They  are  part  and  parcel  of  the  cosmic 
mirage  s®» 

All  things  seen  are  but  projections  of  the  seer;  all 
truths  are  aspects  of  the  Truth;  each  brain  is  a 
facet  of  the  Universal  Mind.  The  universe  itself 
is  but  an  arc  of  the  uncircled  eternal.  The  skeptic 
works  by  elimination.  The  arch-skeptic  is  the 
arch-believer.  He  may  smile  indulgently  at  all 
your  facts  ranged  neatly  in  their  pigeonholes; 
but  there  is  a fact  at  which  he  will  not  smile.  He  is 
awed  by  himself.  He  will  not  believe  his  eyes, 
because  there  is  an  unlidded  Eye  within  his  soul 
that  sweeps  the  infinite  spaces.  He  will  not  believe 
his  ears,  because  there  ring  upon  the  spiritual 
tympanum  the  whispered  vibrations  of  a Law  that 
is  not  dependent  on  the  atom.  He  believes  little  in 
the  rule  of  thumb  and  finger.  Two  and  two  may 
make  four  and  an  eighth  on  Jupiter.  An  extra 
cerebral  convolution  might  have  made  it  so  on 
this  planet. 

THE  “ order  ” of  the  world  is  an  order  built  of 
chance.  Did  the  reverse  hold  true  of  every 
“ universal  ” law,  we  would  as  dogmatically  assert 
the  “fixed  order”  of  things;  and  we  would  get 
along  just  as  well,  or  better — or  worse. 


57 


Our  reasonings  are  expressions  of  character;  our 
divinations  are  related  to  temperament,  and  our 
widest  scientific  generalization  is  but  the  orbit  of 
the  strongest  sun-midge.  Processes  are  eternal; 
facts  are  the  ephemera  of  Time.  Emerson  held  to 
the  Processes:  what  the  Processes  promulged  he 
spumed.  Our  speech  is  mere  cavil.  No  action  is 
whole  and  completed.  Our  real  thoughts  are  un- 
tongued.  The  heart  has  no  lips.  Our  passions  are 
but  the  jagged  shards  of  an  earthen  vessel  broken 
by  too  much  usage.  We  are  doomed  to  the  unutter- 
able. There  is  repetition,  but  no  “ order  ” in  the 
universe  s—  ^ 

Up  to  the  steep  Matterhorn  of  these  negations  the 
skeptic  soul  of  Emerson  toiled  till  it  reached  the 
pinnacle — the  Oversoul  that  canopies  all  negation; 
the  Oversoul  that  is  unarithmetical  and  may  not 
be  numbered.  There  he  dwells  to  this  day — like 
the  pinnacle  of  Mont  Blanc,  still,  snowy  and 
serene 

“ Life  is  a bubble  and  a skepticism,”  he  says  in 
a passionate  paragraph.  Things  reel  and  sway  and 
pass  beyond  the  senses  in  the  minute.  Men  lay 
snares  for  the  Present  and  are  caught  in  their  own 
traps.  Youth  girds  itself  for  a battle  that  is  never 
fought ; manhood  dreams  of  an  old  age  that  never 
58 


comes.  Childhood  is  best  enjoyed  when ’t  is  past. 
The  descent  from  anticipation  to  realization  is 
sheer,  and  our  actions  are  rounded  by  a leer.  Like 
Faust,  we  are  damned  if  we  bid  the  present  moment 
stay,  and  we  are  damned  if  we  bid  it  go.  Rest  is 
stagnation;  motion  is  dispersive.  We  are  lost  either 
way.  If  you  are  as  coarse  as  Belial,  or  as  ethereal 
as  Shelley,  you  are  doomed  to  doubt. 

Systems,  codes,  conventions,  moralities  are  put 
forth  in  trust  and  faith  from  the  larval  brain  of 
man,  and  Time  grinds  them  to  smut.  As  the 
aspiring  flame  from  Hecla’s  crater  is  lost  in  the  pits 
of  night,  so  are  our  highest  exaltations  lost  in  the 
swash  of  the  durations.  Nothing  is  fixed.  All  things 
are  travailing  at  birth  or  are  entering  on  the  death- 
spasm.  Nothing  that  is  bom  or  dies  can  be  final, 
and  that  which  is  not  final  is  not  true.  The  temporal 
order  is  apparitional.  Governments  are  organized 
instincts — and  instincts  are  sexual  and  stomachic. 
That  which  stands  through  eternal  change  is  the 
law  of  change,  and  is  tethered  to  the  inner  man. 

TIME  melts  to  shining  ether  the  solid  angularity 
of  facts,”  says  the  great  Transcendentalism 
And  this  applies  to  moral  as  well  as  to  physical 
facts.  A proper  perspective  shatters  differences. 

59 


Good  and  evil  differ  in  time  and  clime.  Shall  I choose 
this  or  this — and  how  shall  I know  that  that  which 
I choose  is  true?  What  is  right  in  Constantinople 
is  wrong  in  New  York. 

Cain  and  Mary  of  Magdala  are  necessary  ingre- 
dients in  cosmic  economy.  Evil  and  good  are 
spiritual  systole  and  diastole.  There  is  a vice 
slumbering  in  every  virtue.  Comparative  sociology 
tends  to  weaken  the  safeguards  which  conscience 
imposes.  Time  melts  scruples,  and  the  conscience 
of  twenty  is  not  the  conscience  of  sixty. 

Patriotism  depends  on  the  accident  of  birth.  If  a 
man  is  bom  in  a stable,  is  he  bound  to  ride  a horse 
all  the  days  of  his  life?  Theft  is  a matter  of  numbers : 
there  are  statues  to  Napoleon,  but  none  to  Jack 
Cade.  Civilization  is  the  closet  where  we  hide  the 
racial  skeleton.  Our  vices  are  ancient  virtues; 
virtues  are  vices  that  shall  be.  Altruism  is  a subtle 
mode  of  achieving  egotistic  ends.  Self-sacrifice  is 
oblation  of  self  to  self.  Religion  is  a mood,  and 
philosophy,  after  all,  is  but  temperament  intel- 
lectualized.  Note  the  Sherman  Act! 

A history  of  human  opinion  would  be  a history 
of  mankind’s  error.  The  Galilean  system  is  no 
whit  better  than  the  Ptolemaic.  There  is  an  in- 
crement of  mystery — that  is  all.  What  difference 
60 


does  it  make  whether  the  earth  goes  around  the 
sun  or  the  sun  goes  around  the  earth,  if  we  have 
not  solved  the  mystery  of  motion?  What  difference 
does  it  make  whether  matter  is  an  expression  of 
mind  or  mind  an  expression  of  matter,  if  we  can 
define  neither  term?  The  gods  of  the  peoples  are 
metamorphic,  and  scarab  and  Jove  are  but  names. 
The  telescope  of  Galileo  increased  the  distance 
between  us  and  the  stars.  Microscope,  retort  and 
crucible  are  not  as  useful  as  flint  and  spear  and 
battle-ax 

Each  brain  is  a premise,  and  what  you  believe, 
that  is  so.  Civilization  boasts  that  it  has  given  us 
social  order  and  humanized  us,  when  in  reality 
it  has  but  subtilized  the  various  forms  of  aggression. 
All  things  tend  to  complexity  and  perplexity.  The 
simpler  a thing  is,  the  nearer  it  is  to  perfection. 
The  Black  Fellow  can  realize  his  ideals.  Lord 
Byron  could  not.  Highly  elaborated  cerebral 
processes  beget  highly  elaborated  aspirations. 
Simple  natures  start  from  simple  premises,  and  a 
highly  complex  civilization  is  but  a device  for 
increasing  human  ills. 

Emerson  tells  us  that  society  never  advances  or 
recedes.  It  forever  stands.  He  is  skeptical  of  all 
“ progress.”  In  “ Compensation  ” he  riddles  the 

61 


Occident’s  pet  illusion  The  Eastern  sage 
repeats  the  syllable  “ Om  ” a thousand  times,  and 
is  self-hypnotized.  The  Western  gascon  bawls 
“ Progress,”  and  is  hallucinated  by  the  idea  that 
he  is  moving  in  a straight  line.  There  is  social 
dilatation,  but  progress  is  an  illusion.  Mankind  is 
like  a blind  horse  traveling  around  a circus-ring. 
To  acquire  “ knowledge  ” — in  its  Western  sense 
— is  a process  of  sharpening  the  claws  the  better  to 
grip  your  fellow-man’s  throat  in  the  competitive 
struggle  *•»  £» 

If  you  pursue  things,  Time  will  devour  you;  if  you 
stand  still,  you  will  devour  Time.  Emerson’s  law 
of  compensation  tallies  with  that  profound  saying 
of  Seneca’s,  “ For  it  is  all  one  not  to  desire  and  to 
have.”  This  is  the  essence  of  skepticism.  It  denies 
that  any  one  thing  is  better  than  another,  and  affirms 
the  identity  of  opposites.  Rest  in  the  Oversoul  and 
watch  the  water-flies  flit  over  the  darkling  currents 
of  life.  Bid  no  thing  go;  bid  no  thing  stay;  welcome 
the  good  and  the  bad — and  stand  still.  Action  is 
founded  on  fear — the  fear  of  one’s  self,  the  fear  of 
silence,  the  fear  of  being  alone.  Action  is  an  opiate, 
not  a stimulant — it  drugs  the  introspective  self. 
Those  who  sleep,  dream,  meditate,  achieve  all 
that  action  unconsciously  aims  at  and  never  attains 
62 


— peace,  calm,  the  lustral  redemptions.  Molt  hope 
and  fear  and  you  enter  the  realm  of  the  sage.  The 
particular  no  longer  usurps,  and  life  in  the  super- 
sensible begins.  Opinions  become  brain-myths, 
and  “ forward,”  “ backward  ” and  “ progress,” 
the  patois  of  fisherwomen. 

THE  skepticism  of  the  mystic  is  bom  of  the  idea 
that  all  things  eventually  flow  back  to  their 
sources.  The  ages  have  solved  nothing.  The  same 
fundamental  problems  that  confronted  Eschylus 
confronted  Ibsen.  The  soul  of  Plotinus  is  revivified 
in  Maeterlinck.  Edipus  and  Hamlet  were  undone 
by  the  same  inscrutable  Fate.  Job’s  piercing 
shrieks  were  echoed  back  from  the  mouth  of 
Manfred-Byron  on  the  heights  of  the  Jungfrau. 
The  sublime  vision  that  overcame  Buddha  amid 
his  purple  sins  sublimated  the  soul  of  Tolstoy;  and 
the  furies  that  lashed  Orestes  with  serpent  whips 
scourged  Oscar  Wilde  to  his  doom. 

Marriage,  society,  government  are  still  open 
questions.  Imago,  or  butterfly,  the  spirit  persists 
forever.  You  can  not  leash  the  spirit  of  Emerson 
to  a system,  nor  hitch  his  star  to  a benzine-buggy. 
Pessimism  is  a sublimated,  transcendental  opti- 
mism. The  pessimist’s  ideals  are  so  high  that  he 

63 


will  not,  can  not,  conform  his  spirit  to  this  world — 
the  drifting  cinder  of  a bumed-up  Asgard.  Pure 
optimism  is  cerebral  vacuity  tempered  by  a stomach. 

EMERSON  disbelieved  in  the  temporal  order. 

Like  all  the  mighty  brotherhood,  he  was  at 
war  with  the  petty  and  the  transitory.  In  the 
realm  of  Space,  Time  and  Circumstance,  the  worst 
always  happens  because  the  bond-servants  of  the 
triple  chain  are  always  hoping  for  the  best. 

“ The  Transcendentalist  ” was  a lecture  delivered 
at  the  Masonic  Temple,  Boston,  in  January, 
Eighteen  Hundred  Forty-two.  It  is  the  great 
challenge  to  things  as  they  are.  It  is  not  the  chal- 
lenge of  the  skeptic,  but  the  challenge  of  the 
pessimist.  It  breathes  the  positiveness  of  all 
negations.  What  is  worthy?  asks  Emerson.  Your 
charities  are  sycophantic,  your  governments  but 
organized  theft,  your  civilizations  a long  train  of 
felonies,  and  your  boasted  virtues  but  sleazy  vices. 
€[  Life  is  a degradation,  and  man  lives  in  the 
slime-pits  of  lust.  “ Much  of  our  labor  seems  mere 
waiting;  it  was  not  that  we  were  bom  for.”  His 
thought  is  that  of  Buddha,  the  Man  of  Galilee, 
Marcus  Aurelius,  Seneca,  Plato,  Amiel,  Schopen- 
hauer, Nietzsche.  These  have  all  agreed,  in  diverse 
64 


ways,  on  the  essential  sordidness  of  practical  life. 
Life  on  the  terms  given  us  is  an  insult  to  the  soul 
of  man.  Hurry  us  from  this  “ Iceland  of  negations” 
into  newer,  deeper  infinitudes,  past  these  mephitic 
atmospheres!  How  came  we  to  Molokai?  We  are 
the  “ butt-ends  of  men,”  the  tailings  of  gods, 
celestial  sawdust,  leavings  of  past  deviltries.  I will 
none  of  it,  cries  our  Hamlet  of  the  white  tunic  in 
sublime  disdain. 

Nor  could  that  subtle-seeing  eye  be  deluded  by 
the  vesture  of  things.  “ Thou  ailest  here,  and  here,” 
said  Goethe,  sticking  his  finger  into  mankind’s 
age-long  sores.  And  thou  rottest  all  over,  said 
Emerson.  These  mechanical  inventions — the  gew- 
gaws of  a senescent  race — shall  all  be  destroyed 
and  leave  posterity  with  as  little  knowledge  of 
them  as  we  have  of  the  lost  arts  of  Egypt,  a civili- 
zation that  is  not  yet  cold  in  death.  The  seas  shall 
sob  their  litanies  over  the  places  where  you  now 
higgle  and  haggle  for  your  dole.  Your  temples  and 
shrines  shall  become  sun-food,  and  you  shall 
sooner  count  the  stars  than  number  the  nothings 
of  daily  speech. 

Things  will  be  neither  better  nor  worse  in  times 
to  come;  they  will  be  both  The  balances 
are  always  kept.  Evil  will  never  grow  less  so  long 

65 


as  men  cling  to  the  temporal  order.  Ixion  is  bound 
to  his  wheel,  and  while  the  wheel  goes  round  there 
is  no  help  for  man.  The  things  that  are  tangible  are 
the  things  that  are  evil.  Good  is  a negation.  Trans- 
cendentalism is  a negative  good.  It  aims  to  release 
the  individual.  In  the  Spent  Dynamic  alone  there 
is  hope.  On  the  crest  of  the  final  equilibration  will 
man  find  rest.  Life  is  a series  of  undulations  and 
“ Illusion  is  God’s  method.”  Facts  are  mere  bell- 
buoys  on  the  stream  of  infinite  being.  The  objective 
world  is  gelatinous.  Transcendental  pessimism 
seeks  another  order. 

The  equilibration  that  Emerson  dreamed  of — is 
it  aught  but  a wraith  on  the  storm-billows?  All 
motion  tends  to  equilibration;  yet  a state  of 
equilibration  can  not  be  preserved;  motion  begins 
again.  And  so  are  we  played  upon.  The  Pythagor- 
ean Harmony,  the  Spencerian  Equilibration,  the 
Emersonian  Oversoul — are  they  not  identical? 
C.  But  we  will  wait.  Patience ! Our  work  is  not 
here  and  the  sidereal  days  are  not  for  us.  Passion 
bom  of  fire,  and  thought  bom  of  pain,  and  beauty 
bom  of  sex,  and  death  bom  of  life,  mean  nothing 
to  us.  We  smile  at  your  amblings  and  loathe  your 
chicaneries.  We  sit  with  our  hands  folded  waiting 
a call.  If  our  souls  were  created  for  nothing,  then 
66 


to  nothing  we  will  return.  “ If  I am  the  devil’s 
child,  I will  live  unto  the  devil.”  We  will  wait  for 
eons;  the  waves  of  unguessed  cycles  shall  foam 
upon  unwombed  worlds,  and  spit  us  forth  in  vest- 
ments new  and  strange;  and  still  we  shall  wait 
the  call  of  the  Infinite  Counselor.  And  if 
it  come,  we  shall  know;  and  if  it 
do  not  come,  we  shall  know,  too. 


67 


TOLSTOY 

THE  TITAN 


HE  last  of  the  Titans  has  gone. 
Tolstoy  is  dead.  The  great  line  of 
seers  and  prophets  that  began  with 
Isaiah  and  Ezekiel  ended  with  the 
Great  Moujik.  In  the  shadow  of 
that  gigantic  figure  we  are  all  small. 
Around  the  Colossus  of  Yasnaya  Poliana  we  crawl 
and  cringe  and  fret — little  beings  of  a little  day.  His 
bare  brown  feet  rested  firmly  on  the  earth.  His 
majestic  head  was  in  the  constellations.  His  heart 
covered  and  sanctified  the  race. 

He  was  a man  of  sorrows — The  Man  of  Sorrows  of 
the  century.  Like  Buddha  and  Christ,  he  believed 
he  carried  the  burden  of  humanity.  His  mighty 
soul  was  gashed  by  the  evils  of  the  age.  He  saw  that 
life  and  suffering  were  interchangeable  terms;  that 
man  here  below  has  been  caught  like  a rat  in  a trap ; 
that  knavery,  force  and  fraud  ruled  everywhere, 
especially  in  his  own  land.  He  was  a pessimist,  if 
68 


to  see  the  truth  and  speak  it  is  pessimism.  d He 
died  facing  a statue  of  the  Buddha.  He  lived  facing 
the  rotten  aristocracy  of  his  country,  the  criminal 
Grand  Dukes  and  that  gigantic  Graft  called  the 
Greek  Church. 

He  was  the  one  man  that  Russia  feared.  This  is  a 
stupendous  fact,  and  Russia  feared  Tolstoy  be- 
cause she  knew  that  a hand  laid  on  him  would  have 
been  the  signal  for  an  uprising  of  the  whole  human 
race,  of  which  he  was  the  Voice  and  the  Heart, 
d No  matter  how  large  a man  looms  in  the  history 
of  his  time,  he  is  always  a part.  No  man  can  be  an 
absolute  law  unto  himself.  The  Past  and  the 
Present  stand  at  his  cradle.  Each  individual  is 
related  to  an  infinite  number  of  things,  dead  and 
living.  Tolstoy,  like  Hugo,  Savonarola,  Luther, 
was  necessary  to  his  time.  Russia  needed  a Man, 
the  World  needed  a Gospel — and  Tolstoy  rose  and 
grasped  the  lightnings.  For  he  was  godlike  in  his 
majesty — a figure  that  awes  and  cows. 

Tolstoy  was  the  most  significant  figure  of  the 
century,  because  he  came  at  the  most  significant 
period  in  the  history  of  modem  civilization.  He 
was  a reaction.  He  was  the  other  half  of  the  eternal 
law  of  action  and  reaction.  The  times  produce  the 
man,  and  the  man  reacts  on  his  time.  When  the 

69 


people  need  a liberator  he  appears.  Secret  forces 
are  forever  at  work  molding  in  mystery  the  man 
with  the  new  message  in  religion,  philosophy, 
morals,  business. 

iT  the  time  Tolstoy  came  the  world  had  no 
XjLsouI — no  insides.  It  had  telegraphs  and  rail- 
roads, but  no  religion — in  the  spiritual  sense  of  the 
word.  Man  can  not  live  by  machinery  alone.  All 
things  exist  in  nature  by  the  balancing  of  two 
forces:  the  centripetal  and  the  centrifugal.  A 
people  who  are  impelled  by  the  powerful  attraction 
of  external  things  and  who  have  no  counterbalanc- 
ing center  within  are  on  the  way  to  extinction. 
Tolstoy  said  there  is  something  more  than  the 
body.  Christ  preached  the  same  doctrine  at  a 
similar  critical  epoch  in  the  world’s  history. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  an  emperor,  and  Epictetus,  a 
slave,  had  said  the  same. 

Man  gropes  today  for  something  better.  The  old 
gods  are  dead;  the  old  beliefs  are  rotten  reeds. 
Pontifical  pretense  and  theological  sleight-of-hand 
no  longer  interest.  The  Church  is  useful  matter  in 
the  wrong  place. 

When  Tolstoy  began  to  thunder  in  Russia,  the 
Greek  Church  had  still  the  old  pride  in  her  eye. 

70 


Vain  glory  was  emblazoned  on  her  brow,  and  the 
lips  of  the  priests  stank  with  the  grease  of  the 
glutton.  The  Church  was  a braggart. 

Today,  thanks  to  Tolstoy,  the  Greek  Church  is 
being  secretly  investigated  by  every  thinking  brain 
in  Russia.  They  have  dragged  the  purple  and  laces 
off  the  old  jade,  and  beneath  they  have  discovered 
the  Eternal  Prostitute.  And  her  paramour,  the 
old  autocracy,  is  making  shift  for  its  life.  For  every 
dart  that  Tolstoy  hurled  at  that  pair  of  immemorial 
bloodsuckers  was  poisoned  and  stuck  in  their  dugs. 

THERE  was  a stupendous  rebellion  in  Tolstoy’s 
soul : a revolt  against  the  imbecility  of  merely 
living,  like  a rat,  for  the  sake  of  breathing.  A giant 
brooding  sorrow  stood  in  his  eyes ; an  infinite  com- 
passion filled  his  soul.  C.  Thinker?  No,  he  was  not 
that.  He  was  greater  than  a thinker — he  was  a Seer, 
an  Announcer,  a Liberator,  a spiritual  John  Brown. 
He  chose  the  company  of  the  peasant,  of  the 
lowly  and  the  suffering,  because  he  knew  that  they 
held  the  secret  of  existence.  He  sought  out  the 
erring,  because  he  knew  they  were  more  sinned 
against  than  sinning.  He  was  one  with  all  men:  the 
prostitute,  the  thief,  were  puppets.  They  needed 
help,  not  Siberia. 


71 


And  he  spumed  the  complacent  Phariseeism  that 
swims  in  its  own  lard;  he  thundered  against  the 
smug  phrase-makers,  the  professional  optimists,  the 
hypocrites  on  ’Change,  the  hypocrites  on  high. 

He  carried  about  him  a transcendental  nostalgia, 
a homesickness  bom  of  sweet  memories,  a “mansion 
in  the  skies,”  a divine  despair,  a somber  to-hell- 
with-your-civilization ! 

He  made  his  appeal  directly  to  the  heart  of  his 
listeners.  That  is  the  secret  of  his  vast  power.  He 
went  into  the  homes  of  the  peasants,  sitting  with 
them  at  their  meals,  meeting  them  in  the  fields.  He 
knew  that  the  center  of  the  universe  was  every- 
where. So  he  preferred  to  look  for  it  under  rags 
rather  than  under  imperial  purple.  Purple  conceals 
so  much  that  doesn’t  exist.  He  believed  all  men 
were  made  of  the  same  substance — that  he,  Tolstoy, 
was  a potential  drunkard  and  a possible  murderer. 
C[  The  Infinite  was  in  this  man.  He  who  has 
universal  sympathy  possesses  the  Divine.  He  who 
understands  mankind  and  loves  mankind  is  God. 
And  that  is  why  we  call  Buddha,  Christ,  Emerson, 
Mary  Baker  Eddy  and  Tolstoy  divine.  This  is  the 
central  conception  that  illumined  the  brain  of 
Tolstoy,  and  this  is  the  substratum  of  everything 
he  ever  wrote:  Man  Is  One. 


72 


He  depersonalized  himself.  By  a miracle  he  was 
the  Race.  There  is  no  analogy  to  him  in  Modem 
Europe.  To  find  his  peers  we  must  go  to  the  Ganges 
and  beneath  the  Himalayas  It  is  only  there 
among  those  marvelous  Hindus  that  dreams  like 
Tolstoy’s  flourish  and  spread.  It  is  only  there  that 
they  understand  that  wonderful  doctrine  of  Jesus: 
you  shall  lose  yourself  in  order  to  gain  yourself. 
Give  all,  if  you  would  gain  all.  He  who  wants 
nothing  possesses  everything. 

MERCY,  charity,  self-conquest,  renunciation, 
and  finally,  through  discipline,  the  extinc- 
tion of  the  pain-absorbing  and  pain-getting  person- 
ality and  union  with  God — that  was  the  essence  of 
Tolstoy’s  teaching.  Among  the  forces  that  direct 
life,  Tolstoy  preferred  Instinct  to  Knowledge.  The 
Instinct  of  the  animal  is  surer  than  that  of  man.  Is 
it  not  that  belief  which  he  expounds  to  us  in 
Master  and  Servant,  when  Vassili,  having  wandered 
in  a sled  in  the  night  in  a great  snowstorm, 
abandons  the  reins  to  his  servant  Nikiti?  The 
peasant  and  the  horse  find  the  lost  road,  then  the 
village  ^ 

But  they  are  lost  again. 

“ What  shall  we  do  now?  ” asks  the  master. 


73 


“ Let  the  horse  go  without  guidance,”  replies  the 
peasant.  And  the  horse  leads  them  both  back 
home.  C.  The  peasant  and  the  animal  have  more 
wisdom  than  the  educated  man,  says  Tolstoy.  God 
is  in  the  heart,  not  in  the  head.  Reasoning  is  an 
“ ignis  fatuus,”  a false  light.  Trust  the  Universal 
Soul,  and  you  will  “ find  the  way.” 

What  attracted  and  fascinated  Tolstoy  was  that 
instinct  is  anterior  to  the  modes  of  individual 
knowledge.  Instinct  is  spirit.  Knowledge  is  a 
vagary.  Education  is  a perversion  of  life.  Abandon 
yourself  and  all  your  gorgeous  gewgaws  called 
position — and  above  all,  the  gewgaw  of  Self. 

This  was  his  great  doctrine  of  renunciation.  He 
took  direct  issue  with  the  Greeks,  who  taught  the 
joy  of  life.  He  was  the  antithesis  of  Friedrich 
Nietzsche,  who  glorified  even  evil  because  it 
made  existence  majestic.  How  strange  a doctrine 
to  preach  to  the  world  today  living  its  cat-and-dog 
existence!  Give!  Give!  cried  Tolstoy.  Give!  When 
you  give  you  expand.  Renounce  that  little  thing 
that  you  hug  in  your  bosom  and  you  shall  be 
lapped  and  laved  in  the  Infinite. 

Tolstoy  may  have  been  a sublime  disease,  but  he 
was  Sublime.  And  who  amongst  us  is  not  diseased, 
let  him  cast  the  first  stone  at  the  great  Russ. 

74 


In  the  world  of  mediocrities,  fakirs,  make-believes, 
slick-fingers,  gabby-jacks  and  pampered  pharisees, 
Leo  Tolstoy  stands  out  gigantic,  grand,  menacing 
— a voice  crying  in  the  wilderness,  may  be,  but  a 
Voice  that  reverberates  to  the  stars  and  shakes  the 
rotting  dynasties  of  Europe  to  their  foundations 
and  sets  a-tremble  the  dome  of  Saint  Peter’s. 

In  all  Christendom,  he  was  the  only  Christian. 
In  Russia,  he  was  an  apparition  of  Justice. 

Today,  Leo  Tolstoy  is  sitting  with  Buddha,  Christ, 
Lucretius,  Isaiah,  Emerson,  Goethe  and  all  the 
other  earth-gods  who  have  passed  into  the  Council- 
Chamber  of  the  Everlasting. 

Yet  his  religion  was  not  mine,  nor  yours.  The  love 
of  man  and  woman — the  resultant  love  of  beauty 
as  manifest  in  art — was  not  for  him. 

But  how  vain  to  picture  him  by  telling  what  he 
was  not. 

He  was  great  on  account  of  what  he  was.  He 
asked  for  nothing,  and  so  he  was  without  fear.  He 
loved  humanity — not  persons.  He  was  a King  by 
divine  right,  yet  he  loved  the  race  too  well  to  wish 
to  rule. 

The  days  will  pass  and  Tolstoy  will  be  to  countless 
millions  as  the  shadow  of  a great  rock  in  a weary 
land,  d Hail ! Leo  Tolstoy,  hail! — and  farewell! 

75 


GUSTAVE  Le  BON 

THE  PHILOSOPHER  OF  INSTINCT 

USTAVE  LE  BON  belongs  to  that 
high  dynasty  of  impenitent  rebels 
founded  by  La  Rochefoucauld.  His 
The  Crowd,  Psychology  of  Social- 
ism, The  Psychology  of  Races,  and 
his  Psychology  of  Revolution,  which 
latter  is  his  last  book,  have  all  been  translated 
into  English. 

They  are  ruthless,  unsentimental,  and  contain 
no  panaceas  for  sick  people.  To  be  a thinker  is  one 
thing.  To  be  a propagandist  is  another.  They  are 
antithetical  propositions. 

All  thought  aspires  to  Nihilism;  all  propagandism 
aspires  to  fixity  and  permanency. 

And  the  Thinker  and  the  Propagandist  can  only 
effect  a reconciliation  where  parallel  lines  meet — 
in  the  infinite,  in  the  Never-Never  Land  of  cosmic 
evolution.  €1  Bergson  and  Eucken  run  drugstores. 
Gustave  Le  Bon  runs  a laboratory. 

76 


Le  Bon  rips  curtains,  masks  and  dominoes.  He 
exposes,  relentlessly  and  inexorably,  races,  indi- 
viduals and  “ movements,”  and  sets  them  in  the 
gray  light  of  Reality. 

His  analysis  of  the  eternal  Instinct-to-Sham  is  as 
merciless  as  is  that  of  Jules  de  Caultier.  He  holds 
no  brief  for  anything.  He  is  not  in  favor  of  this  or 
that;  nor  is  he  opposed  to  that  or  this.  He  sees; 
he  records.  His  books  fecundate  with  suggestions. 
Their  style  is  simple,  epigrammatic,  fistic. 

His  irony  lies  in  his  logic,  which  in  his  case,  as  in 
the  case  of  all  of  us,  is  merely  the  justification  of 
his  instinct,  his  prejudgment.  His  is  the  esthetic 
instinct.  Pessimism  and  optimism  are  without 
meaning.  They  both  demand  a theory  of  ends. 
They  imply  the  finite.  The  infinite  may  be  con- 
ceivable. Porphyry,  Spinoza  and  Emerson  reached 
it.  But  the  finite — a thing  with  a beginning  and  an 
end — is  plainly  inconceivable.  Life  is  a play  in- 
vented for  Me.  The  rest  is  silence. 

TO  Le  Bon  all  intelligence  prevaricates.  All 
mental  attitudes  are  poses.  All  ideals  that  are 
called  “ intellectual  ideals  ” are  hypocritical.  In- 
stinct is  the  only  psychological  reality.  And 
instinct  is  murderously  egotistic.  To  hide  its 

77 


inherent  malignity  it  invents  millions  of  masks. 
These  masks  are  woven  of  logic  and  reason.  Self- 
love  and  instinct  are  always  rummaging  about  in 
the  wardrobe-rooms  of  the  brain  for  a disguise. 
This  psychological  hypocrisy  is  itself  an  instinct — 
a detail  of  the  instinct  of  self-preservation.  Hence 
moral  codes  and  philosophical  and  religious  “ justi- 
fications ” for  the  most  insane,  absurd  and  perverse 
actions.  Hence  the  ephemeral  nature  of  all  reason- 
ing. Its  role  is  pure  expediency  and  utilitarianism. 
C.  When  the  instincts  have  done  their  work,  the 
masks — or  reasons — she  wove  are  thrown  away 
and  another  mask  is  substituted. 

The  beautiful  reasons  and  theories  on  which  the 
French  people  thought  they  acted  during  the 
Revolution  were  “ faked  ” in  order  to  justify  their 
spoliation  of  the  rich.  Their  right  to  bread,  fuel, 
light,  heat  and  the  “ good  things  of  life  ” was 
inherent 

They  sought  to  starve  those  who  had  starved 
them.  They  destroyed  the  things  that  had  de- 
stroyed them. 

Here  they  were  moral,  sublime,  right,  and  the 
Reign  of  Terror  was  a superb  celebration  of  the 
instinct  to  seek  one’s  own  at  any  cost.  “ Liberty, 
Equality  and  Fraternity  ” had  nothing  to  do  with 
78 


the  Revolution.  They  were  merely  the  moral 
tarpaulins  that  the  Instinct-to-Vengeance  put  on 
when  it  went  forth  to  do  its  work. 

And  it  is  the  Instinct-to-Vengeance  that  is  at  the 
bottom  of  the  war  movement  in  Europe  today. 
This  spirit  is  always  seeking  an  excuse  to  fight. 
Along  the  highways  of  the  world  the  Instincts 
hurry  with  fagot  and  sword;  but  they  send  ahead 
an  army  of  pamphleteers  which  distributes  tracts 
that  formulate  and  justify  the  everlasting  urge. 
This  army  is  Mind. 

The  Instinct-to-Lie,  the  irrational,  the  chimeric, 
the  mystical — these  are  the  bases  of  all  human 
action.  They  are  all,  however,  upon  analysis, 
absorbed  into  the  vital  Instinct-to-Vengeance.  This 
instinct  is  even  metaphysical.  “ Vengeance  is  mine 
saith  the  Lord.”  This,  taken  in  a popular  sense, 
means  that  vengeance  is  alone  the  prerogative  of 
God,  and  not  of  man.  In  its  profounder  sense 
it  means  that  vengeance  is  at  the  heart  of  life, 
that  vengeance  is  the  dynamic  principle  in  all 
motion 

The  word  “ redress  ” is  the  shibboleth  of  the 
ages:  redress  against  Nature,  redress  against  the 
gods,  redress  between  man  and  man.  That  word 
is  forever  on  the  lips  of  man.  In  legend  and  in  fact 

79 


it  is  The  Word.  Redress  is  the  idealization  of  ven- 
geance, and  justice  is  its  logical  mask. 

The  desire  to  “ get  even  ” explains  Moses,  Mo- 
hammed, Ferrer,  John  Brown,  Robespierre,  Wash- 
ington, Robin  Hood,  Napoleon,  Joan  of  Arc,  Karl 
Marx,  Roosevelt  and  William  the  Second. 

It  explains  every  battle  from  Salamis  to  Vera 
Cruz.  It  was  to  “ get  even  ” that  the  lowly  followed 
Christ.  It  was  the  instinct  to  “ get  even  ” that  made 
Luther  nail  his  proclamation  on  the  church-door 
at  Wittenberg.  It  was  to  “ get  even  ” that  the 
North  punished  the  South  in  the  American  Civil 
War  s— 

The  I.  W.  W.  is  an  attempt  to  get  even.  Does 
Upton  Sinclair,  or  Doctor  Reitman  or  Alexander 
Berkman  know  anything  of  “ justice  ”?  Gentleman 
adventurers,  all!  Militants  in  England  will  never 
be  satisfied  with  the  vote.  They  want  to  get  even 
with  the  male,  this  beast  has  been  seducing  them 
with  a dream  of  love  in  a cottage,  all  down  the 
centuries.  C It  is  to  get  even  that  Socialism  has 
come  into  the  world. 

In  a mystical  age  the  Instinct -to -Vengeance  will 
wear  a religious  mask. 

In  a sentimental  age  it  will  wear  a humanitarian 
mask  $+> 


80 


In  a scientific  age  it  will  wear  the  mask  of  logic. 
Bibles  go  out  of  fashion,  like  everything  else. 
C[  The  “ Holy  War  ” of  the  Reformation,  the 
“Holy  War”  of  the  French  Revolution,  the  “Holy 
War  ” of  Socialism — each  has  its  bible,  its  paged 
and  illuminated  euphemisms  to  cover  the  naked 
intent  of  Instinct. 

The  Wittenberg  proclamation,  The  Declaration  of 
the  Rights  of  Man  and  Das  Kapital  are  the  para- 
bles of  humanity  on  the  lips  of  Social  Vengeance. 
Chimera!  Another  word  that  Gustave  Le  Bon 
insists  on.  Man  has  been  defined  variously.  One 
called  him  a metaphysical  animal,  another  a practi- 
cal marauder.  Le  Bon  insists  that  he  is  a sort  of 
mystical  beast.  Man  is  a bom  poet.  For  a Euclid, 
a Newton,  a Darwin,  he  cares  not  a rap. 

But  let  him  catch  a glimpse  of  a Peter  the  Hermit, 
a Joseph  Smith,  a Mirabeau,  a Napoleon,  a Mary 
Baker  Eddy,  a Katherine  Tingley,  and  he  will 
desert  office,  field  and  wife,  and  follow  where  the 
sacrosanct  one  leads  him. 

That  is  because  man  is  a poet.  He  is  a mystical, 
irrational  being,  and  not  a practical,  reasoning 
animal 

The  impossible,  the  supernatural,  the  absurd, 
move  him  to  the  depth  of  his  being. 


81 


He  follows  Chimera  over  corpses,  temples,  crowns. 
Truth  for  the  crowd  lies  in  the  emotions.  Emotions 
are  the  brain  of  its  instincts. 

Aristotle,  Hegel,  Kant,  Spencer,  mean  nothing  to 
the  masses;  but  preach  to  them  a New  Utopia,  or 
tell  them  a tale  of  a mystical  year  to  come  by  a 
simple  “ Be  it  enacted,”  and  a hundred  million  ears 
are  instantly  a-prick.  d That  all  trails  to  Utopia 
lead  to  an  Armageddon  where  the  Prince  of  Jest- 
ers is  always  the  victor,  means  nothing  to  the  race, 
d There  is  always  another  Beyond,  always  another 
Promised  Land,  always  another  Sawdust  Trail  *•» 
The  Vulcans  of  Mystical  Belief  never  sleep  in  the 
Smithy  of  the  Unconscious  where  the  chimeras  are 
fabricated. 

Gullibility  is  a means  of  survival,  and  “ social 
progress  ” is  accelerated  by  the  wonderful  cock- 
and-bull  romances  of  Rousseau,  Marx  and  Bergson. 

IE  BON’S  theory  of  the  French  Revolution  is 
J that  it  was  a mystical,  sexio-religious  crusade, 
d Blood-letting  and  saturnalias  are  incidental  to 
all  crusades  of  a mystical,  religious  type. 

The  anciently  associated  ideas  of  God  and  human 
sacrifice  will  never  become  wholly  dissociated  in 
the  human  mind. 


82 


All  forms  of  worship,  all  forms  of  ecstasy,  all 
notions  of  “ social  progress,”  smell  of  blood. 
Something  must  die,  something  must  be  “ offered 
up,”  in  order  that  man  may  continue  his  antics  on 
a fussy  little  star. 

During  the  French  Revolution  this  ancient  rite- 
instinct  came  to  life  in  the  Reign  of  Terror.  The 
heads  of  thousands  of  aristocrats  were  offered  up 
to  the  “ progressive  ” gods  of  Liberty,  Equality 
and  Fraternity.  C In  the  reign  of  terror  which  in- 
ternational socialism  in  its  infinite  wisdom  will 
soon  inaugurate,  the  offering  will  consist  of  those 
who  belong  to  the  capitalistic  class. 

We  are  still  Egyptians  and  Aztecs,  and  we  sacrifice 
before,  during  and  after  every  battle. 

The  first  “Progressive”  of  whom  we  have  any 
knowledge  was  Cain,  whose  sacrifice  was  rejected 
by  the  Lord  and  who  in  revenge  slew  his  heaven- 
petted  brother;  Cain,  the  real  progenitor  of  the 
French  Revolution;  Cain,  the  first  Socialist. 

When  we  get  enough  Cain  voters,  they  will  elect 
a Cain  president,  and  a Cain  Congress. 

Thomas  Jefferson’s  democracy  was  founded  on 
the  fallacy  that  all  men  are  industrious  by  choice, 
economical  because  they  love  to  be,  and  truthful 
because  it  is  their  nature. 


83 


IE  BON  has  the  greatest  contempt  for  the 
j crowd,  for  the  people.  Democracy  is  the 
anonymous  tyranny — more  terrible,  more  vin- 
dictive, more  vengeful  than  any  absolute  monarchy, 
where  a head  or  heads  may  be  reached  with  a bomb. 

Democracy  is  the  divinization  of  Opinion,  and 
Opinion  is  always  a Caligula. 

The  Crowd  is  the  hydra  that  the  Strong  Man,  the 
Superior  Man,  must  either  slay  or  cajole — or  be 
slain  by  it.  There  is  no  incompetency  like  the 
incompetency  of  the  majority. 

There  is  no  ignorance  equal  to  mob  ignorance. 
The  great  masses  of  mankind  have  not  even  risen 
to  the  level  of  being  good  servants. 

They  have  never  learned  the  first  step  that  points 
to  dominion — service. 

Bom  to  be  graceless  flunkeys,  the  People  aspire 
to  Olympus. 

Holding  within  themselves  the  seed  of  every 
tyranny,  every  absurdity,  every  hypocrisy,  every 
diabolism,  every  form  of  slavery,  they  seek,  by 
amalgamating  and  a closer  herding,  the  miracle 
of  transfiguration. 

Bottom  believes  that  a million  million  Bottoms 
will  make  him  one  of  the  elect.  Vox  populi,  vox 
Dei / — was  there  ever  a greater  libel  on  the  Lord! 
84 


Democracy,  which  is  the  aspiration  to  medioc- 
rity, must  always  fail,  because  there  is  a psycho- 
logical hierarchy  as  well  as  a physical,  geological 
and  esthetic  hierarchy.  Bad  worships  Better,  and 
Better  is  enamored  of  Best. 

This  is  written  in  the  tissues  and  the  corpuscles  of 
man  £» 

Democracy  must  always  fail  because  man  is  a 
religious  animal — he  worships  instinctively  what 
is  above  him — that  which  equals  him  has  no  power 
over  him. 

The  ideal  of  the  People  is  to  be  ruled  and  petted — 
but  ruled  at  any  cost.  Hero-worship  is  vital.  It  is 
the  esthetic  escape  of  the  illiterate  and  heavy-laden. 
C If  the  Hero  does  not  rise  at  the  bidding  of  the 
people,  it  will  manufacture  a god — sometimes  it 
will  be  called  Jupiter,  sometimes  Mohammed, 
sometimes  Public  Opinion. 

There  is  the  eternal  necessity  to  divinize  in  some 
form  the  Instinct-to-Dependency. 

But  abstract  formulas,  like  abstract  deities,  do  not 
satisfy  man  for  long.  His  gods  must  have  a local 
habitation  and  a “ record.” 

A democracy  begins  to  totter  at  the  very  moment 
it  seems  to  be  successful.  C The  great  undertow 
toward  the  concrete  ruler  is  felt. 


85 


Every  Feast  of  Reason  ends  in  a Napoleon.  Suc- 
cessful democracy  means  destruction  of  values — 
vast  numbers  of  men  out  of  work — and  a Roosevelt 
as  a relief! 

Every  “ free  people  ” fosters  a Porfirio  Diaz. 
Every  aspiration  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  authority 
ends  in  a Caesar. 

It  is  because  each  one  of  us  is  secretly  a Caesar,  a 
Diaz,  a Napoleon.  Each  of  us  is  separately  what 
we  fear  to  create  collectively.  Democracy  is  as 
totally  unsuited  to  human  nature  as  is  the  Chris- 
tianity taught  by  Christ. 

Democracy  as  applied  by  the  beneficent  Strong 
Man — a Frederick  the  Great,  a Cromwell,  a 
Marcus  Aurelius,  an  Abraham  Lincoln 
— well,  is  quite  another  thing. 


86 


^ ^ 

^ ^ ^ W W.W.W  W 


VICTOR  HUGO 

THE  SUPREME  GLORIFIER 


AVE  perhaps  Walt  Whitman  and 
Shakespeare,  no  poet  of  any  century 
possessed  a vaster  imagination  than 
Victor  Hugo.  Shelley’s  imagination 
was  subtle,  tenuous  and  gained  in 
luster  and  glory  through  its  very 
limitations.  With  Shelley  one  may  die  of  ecstacy 
and  be  blasted  by  light  from  etheric  suns,  but  one 
is  never  lost.  In  Shakespeare,  Whitman  and  Hugo, 
one  may  be  lost  utterly.  In  these  titanesque  minds 
the  Infinite  puts  its  sightless  logic.  With  them, 
you  are  lost,  drowned,  unlodged — unless  you  know 
the  highways  over  the  constellations. 

The  brain  of  the  scholar,  of  the  savant,  absorbs  the 
culture  of  men.  It  is  fed  in  libraries  and  museums. 
The  brain  of  the  poet  absorbs  the  culture  of  the 
Time-Spirit  itself  The  imperial  imagination 
of  Victor  Hugo  penetrated  the  pores  of  the  Infi- 
nite, and  on  the  finite  world  it  acted  like  a giant 

87 


suction-valve.  His  culture,  like  the  culture  of  the 
greatest  geniuses,  was  a miracle  of  transubstan- 
tiation.  Until  it  reaches  the  alembical  imagination 
of  the  poet  and  seer,  the  universe  is  vegetative  $•* 
He  seethed;  and  he  made  all  Nature  seethe  with 
him.  Whatever  Leconte  de  Lisle  looked  at,  died; 
whatever  Victor  Hugo  looked  at,  lived.  The 
academic  tape-measure  failing  to  reach  round  his 
form,  they  have  said  that  he  lacked  unity,  restraint, 
measure.  He  had  the  unity  of  Niagara,  the  restraint 
of  lightning  and  the  measured  motion  of  the 
earthquake.  When  the  capon  looks  at  the  eagle  it 
no  doubt  believes  the  eagle  insane.  The  only  limit 
that  the  mind  of  Victor  Hugo  knew  was  death, 
and  that,  too,  was  to  him  a limitless  limit,  a lure, 
a promise.  Whoever  believes  that  chaos  has  its 
laws  will  understand  Victor  Hugo.  Whoever  be- 
lieves that  there  is  a discoverable  unity  in  existence 
will  never  understand  him. 

HE  passion  for  unity  is  a symptom  of  fatigue. 


Hugo  never  grew  tired  of  diversity.  He  reveled 


in  difference.  Life  with  its  torrential  and  eternal 
multiplication  of  forms  satisfied,  and  would  have 
satisfied  throughout  an  eternity,  that  gluttonous 
soul;  and  his  passion  for  God  was  a craving  for 


88 


partnership.  He  sought  out  God  to  find  out  His 
secret.  He,  Victor  Hugo,  craved  to  make  atoms, 
stars,  hurricanes,  Utopias,  Hells,  and  Shakespeares. 
C Since  Prometheus,  had  Man  ever  such  a glorifier? 
Was  genius  ever  so  worshiped?  Hugo’s  hero  is  the 
human  soul.  The  evolution  of  the  human  mind  was 
the  evolution  of  God.  Mind  was  the  pontoon  that 
carried  man  from  age  to  age.  The  Ideal  was  the 
aeroplane  that  carried  man  to  the  mystical  Mansion 
in  the  Skies.  Hugo’s  brain  was  a portable  universe. 
He  was  always  big  with  God  and  Man.  He  con- 
stituted himself  the  knight-errant  of  the  race.  All 
his  life  he  stood  sword  in  hand  at  some  moral 
Thermopylae.  His  arrogance  was  the  arrogance  of 
a Jupiter.  He  was  melodramatic;  but  so  is  God. 
He  raved  and  stormed  and  ranted;  but  so  does  the 
Jehovah  of  the  Jews,  in  whose  likeness  he  was 
uttered.  His  books  are  a carnival  of  words,  but 
they  have  at  their  best  the  sovereign  solemnity  of 
the  “ I am  ” of  the  Lord. 

The  flaming  veil  of  day,  the  somber  drop-curtain 
of  night — all  are  glorified.  He  is  Pantheist,  Deist, 
Pagan  and  Christian.  He  marshals  atoms  and 
epochs,  thunders  and  Caesars,  battlefields  and 
hovels  before  our  eye  with  the  gesture  of  a man 
who  was  the  director-general  of  a Cosmos. 


89 


In  his  hands  language  became  incandescent.  Words 
were  fennel-rods  whence  this  Titan  drew  a creative 
fire.  Words  explain  everything.  The  poet  is  Na- 
ture’s sacred  syllable  Om.  All  thoughts  and  feelings 
aspire  to  be  words.  No  thought  or  emotion  can  be 
completely  realized  until  it  becomes  crystallized 
into  a word,  a phrase,  an  epigram,  a poem.  To 
name  a thing  is  to  isolate  it,  confer  on  it  a soul, 
give  it  entity.  If  names,  words,  languages  did  not 
exist,  it  is  doubtful  whether  number  would  exist. 
Words  are  worlds  and  Hugo  sat  down  and  wept 
because  there  were  no  new  verbal  assonances  to 
conquer  *•» 

CL  From  sound  he  squeezed  blood  and  light  and 
tears.  With  the  cymbals  of  syllables  he  struck 
crashing  preludes,  passionate  intermezzos,  and 
tortuous  postludes.  There  are  sentences  in  Hugo’s 
pages  that  are  trumpet-calls  from  trans-stellar 
Sinais.  There  are  paragraphs  that  are  fulgurant 
fanfares  of  sound — nothing  more.  Sound  turning 
somersaults  and  becoming  light  and  lightning. 
Vibrations  changed  into  auroras  and  sibillant 
twilights,  fused  into  sulphurous  anathemas,  dis- 
solved into  vaporous  innuendoes.  Victor  Hugo  was 
the  Wagner  of  words. 

Had  Victor  Hugo  a religion?  Had  Shakespeare? 

90 


Had  Goethe?  Had  Wagner?  «•»  Genius  needs  no 
religion  as  that  word  is  used  generally.  It  is 
sufficient  unto  itself.  It  sees  into  hell;  it  sees 
through  hell.  It  sees  into  heaven;  it  sees  beyond 
heaven.  The  plummet  of  its  thought  sounds  all 
bottoms.  It  penetrates  the  soul  of  the  atom,  weaves 
itself  into  the  mystery  of  the  sea,  and,  vicariously, 
lives  the  life  of  seer  and  murderer.  What  dogmas 
shall  genius  hold  when  all  dogmas  come  to  it  for 
interpretation?  What  has  genius  to  do  with  belief, 
when  it  is  conscious  of  miracle  and  mystery  only? 
Has  God  a religion?  Does  He  believe  in  Himself? 
God  falls  from  grace  at  each  minute.  He  repented 
of  Adam  and  lost  faith  in  Himself  on  the  cross — 
“ My  God,  My  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken 
Me?  ” The  religion  of  genius,  like  that  of  God,  is 
to  participate  in  whatever  is,  to  partake  of  existence, 
to  vitalize  life.  Genius  can  not  sin;  it  can  do  no 
wrong.  The  passion  for  experience  knows  no 
morality.  It  absorbs  and  it  emits.  Goethe  said,  “ I 
understand  the  murderer,  for  I am  he.”  The  mind 
of  the  genius  is  a matrix.  Verlaine  and  Christ, 
Hugo  and  Napoleon,  are  equals  in  the  realm  of  the 
imagination. 

The  great  tragedy  of  genius  is  its  essential  god- 
likeness. It  has  the  instinct  for  omnipotence, 

91 


ominipresence  and  omniscience.  It  has  the  vision 
of  God,  but  not  the  attributes.  It  absorbs  the 
Infinite,  but  it  can  only  create  the  finite.  It  is 
homunculus  with  the  will  to  be  Jupiter.  Shake- 
speare, Byron,  Christ,  Wagner,  Nietzsche,  Flau- 
bert, Rodin,  Michelangelo,  had  the  passion  for 
Creation.  They  remained  artificers  in  words, 
sounds,  marble,  paint.  Sublime  cobblers ! Samsons  of 
comprehension,  they  strained  at  the  pillars  that 
sustain  the  Temple  of  Life — and  the  temple  budged 
not.  Brazen,  inexorable  granite!  Unbreakable  fet- 
ters of  our  eternal  finitude ! 

In  the  cosmic  carnival  of  chance,  the  brain  of 
genius,  by  its  art,  fabricates  order  and  harmony. 
Beethoven  and  Shelley  and  Spencer  unified  their 
dreams.  But  genius  can  never  fabricate  the  supreme 
thing,  the  one  thing  needful  to  be  God.  It  can  not 
create  diversity  without  unity,  it  can  not  create 
a chaos,  it  can  not  strike  from  the  keys  of  matter 
and  motion  that  stupendous  note  of  discord  pro- 
longed throughout  an  eternity  that  we  call  life. 

CK  in  his  impotency,  Victor  Hugo,  in  a divine 


rage,  bespattered  his  God.  The  poem  is  called, 
“ Dieu  Eclabousse  par  Zoile.”  He  accuses  Omni- 
potence of  monotony.  The  words  are  put  into  the 


92 


mouth  of  Zoilus,  but  the  thought — and  the  words 
— is  the  thought  of  Hugo. 

Charlatan!  Have  done  with  this  game  of  blind 
man’s  buff.  We  are  sick  of  the  eternal  humbug 
called  life.  For  once  and  all  let  us  tell  the  Almighty 
some  facts  about  Himself.  His  work  has  neither 
beginning,  end  nor  middle.  His  imagination  is 
exhausted.  He  repeats  Himself  eternally.  He  wrote 
Himself  out  after  the  first  seven  days.  Winter  and 
Summer;  night  and  day;  birth  and  death;  storm 
and  sunshine.  Eternal  renewal!  the  poet  chants. 
Eternal  repetition!  Eternal  boredom!  says  the 
thinker.  Each  thing  is  made  in  the  pattern  of 
some  other  thing.  The  moon  looks  like  an  orange. 
The  tree  looks  like  a hedgehog.  The  river  looks  like 
a serpent.  No  invention  anywhere.  Sterility  and 
stagnation  everywhere.  Motion  itself  is  an  illusion. 
Human  beings  invent  strange  perversions  of  natural 
instincts  to  bless  themselves  with  new  sensations. 
They  die  of  ennui.  The  eternal  blue  of  heaven  is 
setting  us  crazy.  We  know  hope  to  be  a liar,  and 
despair  is  as  stupid  as  death.  Still,  we  must  do  one 
or  the  other.  In  history  God  creates  nothing  new. 
From  Herodotus  to  Carlyle  it  is  the  same  scoundrel 
that  holds  the  center  of  the  stage  and  the  same 
humanity  that  is  mulct,  revolts  and  is  mulct  again. 

93 


He  does  over  a Tiberius,  replasters  a Nero,  regalva- 
nizes a Robespierre.  Since  Cain  not  a new  crime 
has  been  invented.  His  butchery  at  Kishineff  is  an 
old  story  in  the  Old  Testament.  The  disaster  at 
Messina  was  of  no  more  importance  than  that  of 
Pompeii.  The  same  clay,  the  same  men.  The  same 
natural  causes,  the  same  tiresome  consequences. 

The  normal  look  on  the  face  of  every  being  over 
twenty-five  is  one  of  fatigue.  All  other  looks  are 
counterfeit.  After  twenty-five  nothing  new  can 
happen;  before  that  our  acts  repeat  our  ancestral 
acts;  after  that  we  repeat  ourselves.  We  are  highly 
organized  parrots  and  apes.  We  have  the  capacity 
to  enjoy  newer  sensations,  newer  worlds,  newer 
combinations  on  the  old  barroom  checkerboard 
where  we  are  the  checkers.  The  human  being  is 
passionately  in  love  with  the  unknown;  but  we 
have  exhausted  life.  We  are  still  young;  life  is 
stale,  worn  out,  as  commonplace  as  light,  as  weari- 
some as  love.  God  is  defunct. 

HERE  is,  indeed,  only  one  puzzle:  Why  is  any- 


thing? And  if  God  exists,  of  what  use  is  He? 
Why  does  He  exist?  There  are  only  three  dimen- 
sions for  us.  Two  and  two — will  they  forever  make 
that  stale  four?  God,  if  Thou  wouldst  divert  us, 


94 


invent  ten  more  dimensions  for  us.  Point  us  the 
way  to  some  marvelous  planet  hidden  beyond  our 
telescopes  in  your  wrinkled  ether,  that  we  may 
emigrate  there  bag  and  baggage  and  refresh  our 
bored  brains  and  hearts.  Or,  fabricate  for  us  the 
unimaginable,  the  unguessable,  the  new  macrocosm 
and  the  microcosm.  Even  we  have  invented 
marvelous  myth  and  fairy  stories.  Canst  not  Thou 
do  as  much  in  Thy  omnipotence? 

If  not,  raffle  off  Thy  stale  wonders  to  the  monkeys, 
O God!  We  have  outgrown  Thy  nursery  wonders. 
Have  done!  Have  done! 

Pose ! Pose ! Pose ! That  is  the  cry  that  has  eternally 
assailed  the  savage  incursions  of  genius  into  the 
empire  of  the  forbidden  and  its  assaults  upon  the 
ramparts  of  the  conventional  God.  Swine,  cows, 
hens  and  goslings  never  pose.  But  they  believe  that 
the  eagle  perched  upon  its  rock  for  a flight  into  the 
azure  and  the  lion  erect,  expectant,  do.  The  critical 
Poloniuses  dispose  of  the  satanism  of  Baudelaire, 
the  trumpetings  of  Hugo,  the  Don  Juanism  of 
Byron,  the  protean  attitudes  of  Heine,  the  kaleido- 
scopic multi-incarnations  of  Wilde,  with  the  word 
“ pose.”  It  is  the  judgment  writ  in  Lilliput. 
Genius  without  pose  is  not  genius.  All  grandeur 
becomes  self-conscious.  All  superior  beings  seem 

95 


to  be  acting  a part.  What  is  called  pose  in  genius 
is  the  manifestation  of  multiple  and  contradictory 
personalities.  The  simple,  logical,  cut  and  dried 
minds  whose  thoughts,  emotions  and  life-develop- 
ment have  been  surveyed  by  their  ancestors,  and 
of  whom  they  are  merely  a sparkless  increment  and 
not  a vital  development,  are  puzzled  before  the 
myriad  masks  that  genius  wears;  they  have  the 
look  on  the  face  of  a cow  before  the  changing 
colors  of  the  dawn. 

Genius  is  both  Cain  and  Abel,  Lucifer  and  God, 
Hamlet  and  Falstaff,  Munchausen  and  Euclid. 
Hugo  had  multitudes  locked  up  in  him.  As  Leonardo 
da  Vinci  struck  every  mental  attitude,  so  Hugo 
struck  every  imaginative  attitude.  He  was  the 
sincerest  man  of  his  age.  Did  Francois  Villon  pose 
when  he  turned  housebreaker?  I believe  he  did.  It 
was  a splendid  piece  of  irony.  Sometimes  the  poses 
of  genius  are  a sacred  sport.  To  amaze  the  bour- 
geois, to  flabbergast  the  galvanized  masterpieces 
of  routine,  to  turn  somersaults  over  the  social  Ark 
of  the  Covenant,  to  do  the  supremely  absurd  and 
indecorous  thing  before  the  eyes  of  owl-like  Com- 
monsense:  this  is  the  sinister  irony  with  which 
genius  confronts  stupidity.  Jupiter  turned  himself 
into  a cow  to  astound  the  groundlings. 

96 


GENIUS  is  said  to  be  morbidly  egoistic.  It 
assumes,  in  fact,  a still  higher  form  of 
psychological  development  than  egotism.  It  is  im- 
personal. It  not  only  believes  in  itself  utterly,  but 
it  subdivides  itself  ad  infinitum,  that  it  may 
worship  itself  under  a myriad  forms  and  revel  in 
its  own  luminous  magnificences.  It  worships  itself 
in  the  third  person  plural.  The  brain  of  a Hugo, 
a Goethe,  a Whitman  has  a gigantic  mirror  at  the 
top  of  it.  Against  it  there  are  flashed  all  the  attitudes 
of  its  diurnal  physical,  moral  and  cerebral  exist- 
ences. Before  that  mirror  congregate  for  rehearsal 
the  embryos  of  the  things  they  dared  not  do  and 
the  flesh-and-blood  embodiment  of  the  things 
they  have  dared  to  do.  Before  that  passionless, 
incorporate  reflector  the  countless  selves  of  a 
genius  are  always  on  parade.  It  is  the  marvelous 
phenomenon  of  self-consciousness,  at  the  zenith 
of  its  earthly  evolution.  It  is  the  Self  reviewing  its 
own  protean  poses.  It  is  the  consciousness  of  a 
mighty  Sun  that  holds  within  its  monstrous  grip 
a countless  number  of  satellites. 

Against  Hugo  as  against  Shelley  they  have  hurled 
“Blasphemer!”  As  though  the  mind  could  blas- 
pheme! As  though  a thought  could  be  impious! 
As  though  the  brain  could  ever  do  wrong!  The 

97 


human  mind  invented  God;  the  human  mind  is 
privileged  to  kill  Him  whenever  it  pleases.  There  is 
only  one  blasphemy  of  which  the  human  mind  is 
capable — that  is,  to  exclude  from  it  any  thought 
that  knocks  for  entry.  Genius  is  never  so  sublime 
as  when  hurling  its  anathemas  against  the  walls 
of  heaven.  Lucifer  marshaling  his  hosts  against 
the  Lord,  Prometheus  launching  his  thunderbolts 
from  the  Caucasus  against  Jupiter,  Cain  with 
imprecatory  fist  pointed  at  the  stars,  Lucretius 
canceling  God  in  the  soulless  atom,  Flaubert  ram- 
ming the  snouts  of  all  the  credulous  into  the 
trough  with  Saint  Anthony’s  pig,  Nietzsche  trying 
to  drag  Dionysius  on  to  the  throne  of  God  until 
the  blood-vessels  in  his  brain  burst,  Baudelaire 
placarding  the  courtyard  of  Heaven  with  litanies 
in  praise  of  Satan,  Victor  Hugo,  posing  as  Zoilus, 
bespattering  his  God ! How  does  this  compare  with 
the  sanctimonious  buttoned-up  air  of  a Peck- 
sniffian  race? 

Since  commandments  are  always  to  be  made,  I 
venture  this  one:  Thou  shalt  not  blaspheme  against 
genius.  Only  genius  may  say  with  authority,  “ Noli 
me  tangere!”  All  geniuses  are  incarnate  gods. 
They  may  bespatter  all  things;  but  thou  shalt  not 
bespatter  them ! 

98 


4%  ‘ •».* ' ^ ' •s*  * «s>  * a 4V  4V  •$& 

w.w.w.^.w.w.w.  w.  w.w 


ANDREW  LANG 

THE  HUMANIST 

NDREW  LANG  is  dead;  but  his 
spirit  abides,  and  that  gaiety,  in 
which  there  was  no  bitterness,  is 
a priceless  legacy  to  us.  Few  men 
think  sharply,  crystallinely.  This 
man  did.  His  verse  always  fetches 
up.  He  tells  us  something  because  it  is  too  good  to 
keep 

The  name  of  Andrew  Lang  adds  another  to  the 
long  list  of  Scotchmen  who  have  dowered  the  world 
with  ideas.  Lang  was  bom  at  Selkirk,  in  Eighteen 
Hundred  Forty-four,  and  was  therefore  sixty- 
eight  when  he  died — an  age  at  which  most  men 
are  just  beginning  to  rest  on  their  oars  and  take 
things  easy  after  “ life’s  fitful  fever.” 

Old  Ursus  Major,  it  will  be  remembered,  nursed  a 
time-honored  and  utterly  inexplicable  grudge 
against  the  Scotch. 

Yet,  had  it  not  been  for  one  Scotchman,  James 

99 


Boswell,  it  is  fairly  certain  that  the  name  and  fame 
of  Doctor  Johnson  would  have  suffered  partial,  if 
not  total,  eclipse.  For,  as  Macaulay  aptly  observed, 
most  authors  are  known  and  read  because  of  what 
they  have  written,  whereas  Johnson’s  personality 
is  familiar  to  us  even  when,  as  is  the  case,  his 
sonorous  productions  have  been  dumped  into  the 
capacious  ragbag  of  old  Father  Kronos,  and  lost  in 
the  shuffle. 

Boswell’s  famous  Life  is  a brilliant  portraiture  of 
Johnson  that  can  never  fade. 

As  a boy,  Andrew  Lang  attended  school  at  the 
Edinburgh  Academy. 

Later  he  studied  at  Saint  Andrew’s  University, 
and  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 

He  was  a Classical  scholar  of  profound  erudition, 
and  the  wealth  of  literary  and  historical  allusions 
in  his  writings  reminds  us  of  nothing  so  much  as 
a page  from  Macaulay,  who  wrote  things  which, 
as  he  lightly  averred,  “ every  schoolboy  ” would 
recognize  at  once. 

And  probably  not  since  Macaulay  have  we  had 
the  unusual  example  of  a man  whose  literary 
interests  were  so  unlimited  and  well-inclusive. 
Lang  could  not  rest  content  with  one  widening 
vista,  one  horizon,  one  narrow  sphere  of  activity; 
100 


his  vision  must  be  bounded  only  by  the  univer- 
sal horizon — he  must  touch  life  at  all  points  and 
understand  all  its  aspects. 

Andrew  Lang  had  drunk  deep  from  the  Pierian 
spring.  His  was  true  culture , if  there  is  such  a 
thing,  and  we  believe  there  is. 

By  some  he  has  been  accused  of  arrant  dilettan- 
teism,  a charge  implying  what  Lamb  was  pleased 
to  call  “ superficial  omniscience.” 

To  others  Lang  represented  a “ syndicate,”  and 
the  implication  is  a genuine  compliment  to  the 
man’s  versatility. 

Andrew  Lang  was  thoroughly  at  home  in  a wide 
multiplicity  of  literary  fields. 

As  an  all-around  litterateur  he  had,  perhaps,  no 
peer  among  modem  writers. 

He  was  a poet  of  marked  ability,  a first-class  critic 
and  book-reviewer,  a graceful  essayist,  a faithful 
and  charming  translator,  and  an  enthusiastic 
Classicist. 

Not  essentially  and  primarily  a stylist,  in  the  sense 
in  which  Walter  Pater  and  Edgar  Saltus,  for  in- 
stance, are  stylists,  he  yet  possessed  an  easy, 
fluent  style  which  radiates  through  all  his  works 
and  renders  them  eminently  readable  and  enter- 
taining. He  commanded  the  Midas  literary  touch, 

101 


and  transmuted  into  purest  gold  whatever  he 
committed  to  paper. 

Despite  the  fact  that  he  was  a prodigally  prolific 
penman,  his  works  were  endued  with  unfailing 
freshness  and  novelty  of  treatment,  and  were  never 
tinctured  with  the  odor  of  midnight  oil. 

I once  attended  a banquet  in  London  where 
Andrew  Lang  had  been  announced  as  the  principal 
speaker.  The  chairman  had  introduced  him.  He 
arose.  But  before  he  could  loosen  up  his  oratorical 
batteries,  the  band  started  to  play  Auld  Lang  Syne. 
It  was  a “ bromide,”  but  Lang  laughed  with  the 
rest  of  us,  as  if  it  were  all  new. 

FOR  years  Lang  contributed  to  the  London 
Daily  News  signed  reviews  and  editorials, 
quite  equal  in  their  way  to  the  essays  with  which 
Addison  and  Steele  popularized  The  Spectator  in 
Queen  Anne’s  time. 

As  a translator,  Lang  did  notable  work.  His  prose 
version  of  the  Iliad,  done  in  collaboration  with 
Walter  Leaf  and  E.  Myers,  and  of  the  Odyssey, 
with  Professor  Butcher,  are  among  the  very  finest 
translations  with  which  Homer  has  been  honored; 
and  it  was  Matthew  Arnold  who  declared  that  in 
the  last  analysis  Homer  was  really  untranslatable. 
102 


Lang  also  translated  the  Idyllic  Poets — Theoc- 
ritus, Bion  and  Moschus — preserving  the  spirit 
of  the  originals  most  admirably.  Likewise,  his 
rendering  of  the  old  folk  yam,  Aucassin  and  Nico- 
lette,  is  a classic. 

His  Letters  to  Dead  Authors  remind  one  somewhat 
of  Walter  Savage  Landor’s  Imaginary  Conversa- 
tions, although  they  are  free  from  the  gross  anach- 
ronisms that  of  necessity  characterized  the  Imagi- 
nary Conversations. 

Andrew  Lang  was  always  interested  in  anthro- 
pology and  folk  lore.  He  compiled  a series  of  fairy 
story  books  for  children,  named  after  the  primary 
colors;  as,  the  Blue  Fairy  Tale  Book,  the  Red 
Fairy  Tale  Book,  the  Green  Fairy  Book,  Olive 
Fairy  Book,  the  Red  Book  of  Animals,  and  so  on. 
C[  In  this  work  of  compilation  and  editing  he  was 
ably  assisted  by  his  wife.  It  really  takes  two  to  do 
anything.  Lang’s  work  in  this  fascinating  field, 
however,  was  not  all  in  the  nature  of  research.  He 
wrote  first-rate  fairy  stories  himself,  such  as  Prince 
Prigio,  Prince  Ricardo  of  Pantouflia,  and  Gold  of 
Fairnilee  so  so 

Andrew  Lang  was  an  ardent  admirer  of  Joan  of 
Arc,  and  he  defended  her  reputation  with  might 
and  main  in  his  controversy  with  Anatole  France. 

103 


MERRY  Andrew  was  an  able  controversialist. 

He  loved  a goodly  war  of  words  as  well  as 
a Bull  Moose — almost. 

On  any  righteous  occasion  his  hat  was  in  the  ring, 
but  it  was  n’t  a sombrero — and  it  never  needed 
reblocking  at  the  conclusion  of  a bout  of  verbal 
fisticuffs  so* 

Doctor  Johnson  could  never  brook  rhetorical 
opposition.  His  friend  Goldsmith  used  to  say  that 
Johnson  was  sure  to  get  the  better  of  an  argument 
even  if  he  had  to  resort  to  a knotted  bludgeon  to 
do  it  so*  so* 

Lang  was  scarcely  that  kind  of  a controversialist. 
His  particular  delight  lay  in  vanquishing  an  adver- 
sary with  the  adversary’s  own  favorite  weapons — 
roasting  him  on  his  own  gridiron,  so  to  speak. 
Throughout  his  life  Lang  retained  the  Scotch- 
man’s fondness  for  outdoor  life  and  the  healthful 
habit  of  recreation.  He  was  devoted  to  cricket, 
golf  and  fishing. 

His  classic  introduction  to  The  Compleat  Angler 
would  have  delighted  the  heart  of  good  old  Izaac 
himself  sc  sc 

“ For  my  part,”  he  writes,  “ had  I a river,  I would 
gladly  let  all  honest  anglers  that  use  the  fly  cast 
in  it.”  so*  sc 


104 


Some  idea  of  the  extent  and  variety  of  Lang’s 
published  works  can  be  had  by  running  through 
the  following  list  of  titles,  which,  by  the  way, 
does  not  begin  to  exhaust  the  number  of  books 
bearing  the  impress  of  his  genius:  Ballads  and 
Verses  Vain;  Rhymes  a la  Mode;  Books  and  Book- 
men; Letters  to  Dead  Authors;  The  Politics  of 
Aristotle;  Myth,  Ritual  and  Religion;  Letters  on 
Literature;  Lost  Leaders;  Life,  Letters  and  Diaries 
of  Sir  Stafford  Northcote;  Angling  Sketches; 
Essays  in  Little;  Homer  and  the  Epic;  Cock  Lane 
and  Common  Sense;  The  World's  Desire;  With 
H.  Rider  Haggard;  The  Companions  of  Pickle; 
The  Homeric  Hymns;  A History  of  Scotland  from 
the  Roman  Occupation;  Magic  and  Religion; 
Alfred  Tennyson;  The  Mystery  of  Mary  Stuart; 
The  Valet's  Tragedy;  John  Knox  and  the  Refor- 
mation; Homer  and  His  Age;  The  Book  of  Dreams 
and  Ghosts;  Ballads  and  Lyrics  of  Old  France;  A 
Defense  of  Sir  Walter  Scott;  The  Border  Min- 
strelsy; and  many  others,  an  enumeration  of  which 
would,  in  the  language  of  an  old  chronicle,  be  “too 
tedious  to  mention.” 


105 


WV w w.w  w w.w.w. w w 


JEAN  JACQUES  ROUSSEAU 

THE  PSYCHIC  SEISMOGRAPH 

WO  hundred  years  ago  a man  was 
born  who  was  the  father  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  the  Grand- 
father of  the  Twentieth  Century 
and  the  godfather  of  all  revolutions. 
C He  was  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau. 
In  many  respects  Rousseau  was  the  most  extra- 
ordinary man  that  ever  lived — a man  of  whom 
Disraeli  said,  “ If  history  had  no  Rousseau  we 
should  have  to  invent  one.” 

Rousseau  is  one  of  the  few  men  whom  nobody 
cares  to  believe  in,  but  whom  everybody  must 
believe  in.  He  is  one  of  the  few  men  whose  writings, 
with  the  exception  of  the  Confessions,  are  obsolete, 
but  to  whose  pen  nearly  every  philosopher  and 
thinker  pays  tribute. 

This  is  because  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  like 
Voltaire,  Paine,  Ingersoll,  John  Brown  and  Lincoln, 
was  not  a man  but  an  incarnation,  a fatal  event 
106 


in  the  evolution  of  the  race,  a Voice  that  had  to  be 
promulged  s— 

Men  who  are  wrong  are  just  as  necessary  to  the 
world  as  those  who  are  right.  What  a man  thinks 
does  not  count,  but  the  time,  place  and  manner 
of  his  thinking  do. 

' HREE-FOURTHS  of  Rousseau’s  opinions  and 
doctrines  are  rubbish  in  the  right  place.  He 
was  generally  wrong,  but  he  smashed  what  needed 
smashing.  He  unriveted  chains,  he  unlocked  bolts, 
he  dissolved  a whole  aristocracy,  he  blew  in  the 
ramparts  of  the  Bastile,  and  he  wrote  the  history 
of  his  life,  which  founded  a literature  entirely  new 
in  the  world. 

And  he  did  all  this  as  every  great  man  does  what  he 
is  ordered  to  do — grabbed  the  things  nearest  to 
him  and  used  them. 

Sentimentalist,  educationist,  communist,  lady- 
killer,  baby-killer,  gentleman,  woman  suffragist, 
mollycoddle,  dreamer,  a cash-down  spender  and 
borrower,  democrat,  aristocrat,  and  sociological 
faker  par  excellence,  this  extraordinary  man  stands 
in  history  with  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  Benvenuto 
Cellini.  He,  like  they,  epitomized  the  aspirations 
and  the  humbugs  of  the  race. 


107 


But  his  work,  his  achievement  in  thought  and  in 
the  movement  for  human  liberty  which  must 
immortalize  him  forever,  was  his  denial  of  the 
divine  rights  of  kings.  He  completed  in  France  what 
Cromwell  began  in  England.  The  divine  rights  of 
kings!  It  was  Rousseau  who  in  his  Social  Contract 
compounded  the  political  “ 606  ” that  forever 
drove  that  worm-eaten  belief  from  the  human 
mind  so  so 

Society  is  a contract,  said  Rousseau,  a sacred 
contract  entered  into  by  every  peasant  at  his  birth 
with  the  ruling  power,  and  woe  betide  the  ruler 
that  breaks  the  contract.  Rousseau,  of  course,  was 
wrong,  but  he  was  right  then  and  the  doctrine  is 
still  legitimate  to  use  today  when  the  Kaiser  starts 
to  pull  the  old  bunk,  and  tie  the  bull  in  the  parlor. 
C Society  progresses  by  handing  out  buncombe 
for  buncombe.  It  is  bunk  off  the  hick  for  bunk  out 
of  the  Bible.  Rousseau  handed  out  to  the  rulers  of 
his  day  bunk  off  the  hick — and  sure  enough,  Louis 
the  Sixteenth  had  to  peel  his  collar. 

In  society  there  is  no  contract.  As  in  Nature,  the 
fittest  survive  and  the  weakest  go  to  the  wall.  And 
that  is  right  and  good.  But  Rousseau,  of  course,  had 
never  heard  of  Darwin — and  Darwin  said  he  did  n’t 
care  a tinker’s  tink  for  Rousseau  so  Some  day 
108 


somebody  is  going  to  say  the  same  thing  of 
Darwin,  times  change. 

ROUSSEAU’S  cardinal  contention  was  that  man 
, in  a state  of  nature  is  a benevolent  animal. 
Today  we  know  that  Rousseau  was  wrong.  In 
primitive  societies  the  strong  man  took  by  natural 
right  the  leadership  of  the  tribe.  The  craftiest,  the 
most  intelligent,  man  in  the  tribe  became  a priest, 
a medicine-man,  a lawyer.  No  man  is  any  better 
than  it  is  necessary  to  be.  As  society  evolved,  and 
incalculable  number  of  changes  and  readjustments 
took  place,  but  the  law  of  deference  to  strength 
and  brains  never  was  obscured. 

Rousseau’s  benevolent  savage  is  a myth.  His 
psychology  was  bad.  It  is  a fundamental  instinct 
of  the  individual  to  award  to  the  superior  man — 
morally,  mentally  or  physically — the  highest  prizes 
of  life 

Rousseau’s  democracy  came  out  of  his  fundamental 
principle  that  all  men  are  originally  good  and  equal. 
But  today  we  know  that  democracy  is  only  a word. 
It  has  never  been  practised  or  practicable.  The 
people  rule — through  rulers.  And  the  man  who 
has  the  most  to  say  about  the  rule  of  the  people  is 
a tyrant  with  false  whiskers. 


109 


In  America,  instead  of  Grand  Rulers,  we  have 
Bosses.  An  aristocracy  of  mind,  an  aristocracy  of 
character,  an  aristocracy  of  craft  and  graft — we 
will  never  get  beyond  the  aristocracy  principle. 
Socialism  itself  would  become  an  aristocracy  of 
office  holders  and  the  boss  would  be  supreme. 
Rousseau  was  thus  a sentimental  democrat.  He 
was  all  feeling.  He  thought  with  his  nerves.  He 
was  a superb  creator,  but  he  could  not  think.  A 
sublime  egomaniac,  he  was  the  incarnation  of  the 
will-to-produce  through  the  emotions.  The  will- 
to-produce,  to  create,  has  never  been  affirmed  with 
greater  tenacity  and  with  so  much  energy  as  by 
Rousseau.  He  was  always  in  a condition  of  feverish 
exaltation 

He  was  an  elementary  force,  like  Hugo,  Wagner 
and  Whitman,  and  dazzles  the  imagination  like 
a volcano  in  eruption  or  like  a geyser  lashing 
Antaeus.  Victor  Hugo  said  Rousseau  was  a new 
kind  of  genius,  for  he  created  a new  way  of  feeling, 
d,  To  create  naturally,  to  create  spontaneously 
in  the  empyrean  of  thought  and  action,  to  create 
new  sensations,  to  create  in  his  own  interior  of 
life  by  incessant  flagellations  a la  Saint  Augustine 
and  Tolstoy — that  was  the  secret  of  Rousseau,  of 
why  he  carried  in  him  the  germs  of  a thousand 
110 


revolts,  a thousand  poems,  a thousand  fantasies 
and  a thousand  bitter  memories. 

Creation!  Creation!  It  is  that  passion  that  makes 
man  a god.  The  world  is  forever  in  gestation,  and 
so  is  the  brain.  The  brain  is  a matrix.  In  Rousseau 
not  to  create  was  to  die.  There  was  nothing  serene 
or  coldly  intellectual  about  him.  Emotions  and 
images,  feelings  that  moved  like  lightning,  a frantic 
mental  rhyme,  a passion  that  hurried  like  mad- 
dened waters — all  this  produced  great  crises  in 
his  life  when  he  appeared  insane — was  insane  no 
doubt  so  so 

GENIUS  scorns  its  own  safety.  Parturition  is 
the  neighbor  of  death.  Those  who  are  normal, 
sane  and  healthy  see  clearly.  Rousseau  was  insane, 
and  so  have  been  the  great  minds  of  all  time,  from 
Buddha  to  Nietzsche.  Insanity  in  genius  is  a super- 
abundance of  health;  while  the  perfectly  sane  man 
is  invariably  stupid,  and  always  uninteresting. 
Rousseau’s  life  itself  was  a romance  written  by  a 
mad  demon.  Bom  with  an  infirmity,  strangely 
sensitive  and  clairvoyant  even  as  a baby,  he  was 
at  seven  years  abandoned  by  his  father  who  had 
allowed  him  to  stuff  his  head  with  romances.  Put 
into  a boarding-school  of  a Protestant  pastor  in 

ill 


Geneva;  taught  Latin,  history,  geography;  bat- 
tened, crammed  and  rammed  with  learning,  at 
nine  he  began  the  study  of  Euclid. 

At  eleven  years  he  was  an  engraver.  The  man  to 
whom  he  was  apprenticed  beat  him.  Here,  according 
to  himself,  he  learned  to  steal,  to  lie  and  to  give 
lectures.  At  twelve  he  poses  as  a stoic  between 
erotic  dreams. 

At  sixteen  years  he  fled  from  Geneva  and  became 
a tramp.  In  Savoy  he  encountered  Madame  de 
Warens.  She  sent  him  into  an  asylum  in  Turin, 
where  he  goes  over  to  Catholicism.  And  so  it  runs 
to  the  end  of  his  life. 

He  lives  whole  lives  in  a single  day.  No  feeling,  no 
crime,  no  sensation  is  foreign  to  him.  Life  for 
Rousseau  was  an  experiment.  Living  was  an  expe- 
rience 

All  experience  after  it  has  filtered  through  and 
refined  itself  in  the  mind  of  the  first  order  is  good. 
In  the  perspectives  of  memory  the  solid  angularity 
of  all  our  pains  and  “ sins  ” is  melted  in  a shining 
ether.  The  ego  puts  an  aureole  on  everything.  Even 
penance  and  remorse  are  luxurious;  they  are 
methods  of  glorifying  our  transgressions.  In  the 
great  menstruum  of  the  emancipated  mind,  in 
spite  of  that  terrible  bleat  from  his  heart,  every 
112 


thing  is  fashioned  into  gold.  The  real  philosopher’s 
stone  is  the  brain. 

Rousseau  was  unscrupulous.  So  was  Caesar,  Bacon, 
Bismarck  and  Webster.  A man  who  makes  a 
promise  has  blasphemed.  He  sneers  at  Fate  and 
Destiny.  Every  promise  is  kept  for  an  ulterior 
purpose,  just  as  every  debt  is  paid  in  order  to 
contract  another.  Rousseau  was  elemental.  He 
did  what  was  expedient.  Like  Bismarck,  Rousseau 
might  have  said,  “ If  I lied  I meant  it.”  In  Rous- 
seau’s Confessions  there  are  a thousand  and  one 
lies.  It  is  the  liar’s  Arabian  Nights — not  lies  in  the 
usual  sense  of  the  word,  but  feats  of  the  imagi- 
nation, a record  of  the  things  Rousseau  was  going 
to  do,  thought  he  did,  or  ought  to  have  done. 

And  these  things  are  just  as  important  as  the  things 
he  did.  The  practical  has  no  greater  importance 
than  the  imaginary,  and  what  I intend  doing  is 
more  important  than  what  I have  done. 
Unaccomplished  purpose  is  a promise  of  immor- 
tality 

Rousseau  with  Voltaire  was  the  reservoir  and  the 
alembic  of  all  the  past  world.  To  those  two  minds 
the  past  massed  itself  for  judgment — and  got  it. 
His  brain  was,  in  fact,  a universal  brain. 

The  Baltimore  and  Chicago  Conventions  talked 

113 


Rousseau,  whether  they  knew  it  or  not.  Rousseau 
was  latent  in  Cromwell.  He  was  there  as  instinct, 
as  tendency.  In  the  dullest  brain  this  Call  is  buried 
but  it  lies  so  deep  under  strata  of  custom  and  con- 
vention that  its  stirrings  are  never  felt. 

Rousseau  was  a lock-picker  of  inner  doors.  He  was 
a psychic  seismograph.  He  registered  in  his  sensi- 
bility the  earthquakes  in  the  souls  of  muted 
millions 

In  France  today  the  school -children  chat  about 
“ Jean  Jacques.”  Two  hundred  years  from  now 
he  will  still  be  the  mighty  “ Jean  Jacques.” 

France  never  forgets  her  great.  And  the  world  can 
never  forget  France.  With  all  her  vagaries,  she  is 
the  Torch  of  the  World.  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Hugo, 
Millet,  Rodin — we  can  do  without  the  rest ! 


114 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

MYSTIC,  PESSIMIST,  POET 


AINE  tells  us  that  all  genius  can  be 
explained  by  environment.  As  a 
certain  soil  only  will  produce  lemon- 
trees,  so  a certain  social  and  racial 
soil  only  will  produce  a certain  type 
of  poet,  musician  or  painter.  C[  But 
Poe  upset  this  interesting  theory.  His  work  is 
exotic  in  America.  He  came  from  Mars,  where 
people  do  not  have  to  work,  economize  and  keep 
sober  $+■ 

Terror  and  beauty  were  the  twin  goddesses  that 
baptized  the  soul  of  this  strange  genius,  Poe.  His 
life  was  an  excursion  into  the  weird.  And  the  weird 
is  the  beautiful,  plus  the  strange.  He  dwelt  on  the 
borderland  that  divides  sanity  from  insanity.  He 
caught  gleams  of  a remoter,  super-lunar  world  that 
blasted  him  when  he  looked  or  listened.  He  fumbled 
with  the  keys  to  strange  doors;  he  haunted  the 
corridors  of  white  temples  set  in  dreams;  he  held 

115 


conference  with  strange  creatures  of  air  and  light 
that  no  one  else  could  see;  he  saw  behind  the  veils 
of  matter  into  the  ghost-world. 

Poe  is  unanalyzable.  He  was  the  victim  of  an 
obscure  mood  that  lies  beyond  the  experience  of 
ordinary  men.  In  reading  his  tales  or  poems  we 
are  shot  into  a terra  incognita.  We  feel  an  Atmos- 
phere, but  we  see  nothing  plainly.  We  verge  on  the 
lunacy  that  legends  say  lurks  in  mountain  moon- 
shine. We  have  the  sense  of  being  haunted.  We  feel 
lost  in  a giant  Nightmare  that  fascinates  like  the 
beautiful,  sinister  eye  of  a snake.  We  lay  down  The 
Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  Elegia,  or  The  Raven 
to  touch  the  furniture  or  listen  to  the  ticking  of 
the  clock  and  thank  God  that  we  are  still  real  and 
sane  «•» 

The  victim  of  an  obscure  mood,  his  soul  was 
stroked  by  subtle  fingers  on  ghostly  bodies.  His 
heart  pumped  into  his  brain  the  most  pathetic 
figures  that  ever  haunted  the  cells  of  a brain — 
those  brain-cells  that  entombed  a million  prenatal 
despairs  that  were  the  catacombs  of  his  Lenores 
and  Helens. 

What  were  those  “ sheeted  memories  of  the  past  ” 
that  squeaked  and  gibbered  at  his  heels  all  his 
life?  His  face  as  depicted  by  Valloton  is  the 
116 


ghastly  face  of  a man  who  has  seen  the  forbid- 
den. Whence  these  gnawed  and  upturned  dead 
faces  that  drifted  past  on  shoreless  seas  of  sinister 
green?  And  those  cunning,  black  eyes  that  flashed 
on  him  from  their  sunken  sockets?  Hallucinated! 
Hallucinated!  we  say — but  all  great  art  is  the 
product  of  hallucination,  of  a vivid,  violent,  inner 
vision  that  passes  before  the  mind’s  eye  like  a bolt 
of  lightning  over  the  mountain-tops. 

Like  Hecla’s  torch  that  flames  in  an  imperial 
solitude  did  this  strange  visitor  to  earth,  Edgar 
Poe,  live  and  die  among  men. 

One  night,  many  years  age,  in  Philadelphia,  the 
celebrated  painter,  John  Sartain,  was  sitting  in 
his  library,  when  Poe,  wild,  disheveled,  bruised, 
ran  into  his  room  and  declared  he  had  seen  on  the 
walls  of  the  prison,  where  he  had  spent  the  previous 
night,  a host  of  angels  clad  in  moonlight,  that  blew 
from  wreathed  trumpets  wild  blasts  toward  the 
heavens.  Has  not  the  poet,  too,  his  Via  Dolorosa? 
c;  His  poems  take  us  to  one  region  only — “ bottom- 
less vales  ” and  “ boundless  floods  ” and  “ chasms 
and  caves  and  titan  woods.”  They  are  excursions 
in  No-Man’s  Land.  Had  he  discovered  the  El 
Dorado  of  the  spirit?  Had  he  forced  the  Northwest 
Passage  from  matter  to  the  supermaterial? 


117 


We  wonder  in  what  ethereal  sphere  his  soul  had 
been  molded,  and  why  it  got  itself  flesh  and  came 
here  to  this  prison-house  to  chant  and  get  buried 
after  forty-four  pitiless  years  of  life.  The  glamour 
of  another  world  hung  over  his  soul.  He  seemed 
out  of  place  in  the  flesh.  A strange  brotherhood 
are  these  hallucinated  beings.  They  come  into  life 
laden  with  inextinguishable  griefs,  and  stand  at 
but  one  remove  from  death.  They  are  gray  of 
heart  and  ashen-hued  of  brain;  they  are  tethered 
to  the  unseen,  and  you  shall  sooner  dissever  the 
sun  from  its  fires  than  see  them  walk  the  ways 
of  men  £•» 

POE’S  soul  was  cradled  in  a filmy  ecstasy.  All 
reality  was  a blasphemy.  He  preferred  half- 
lights,  doors  ajar,  curtains  that  swung  in  what  he 
believed  to  be  a mystic  unison  with  the  breeze 
flames  that  flickered  in  ebon  censers,  waters  dyed 
in  shadows.  The  mystery  of  man ! And  the  mystery 
of  the  world ! They  are  hieroglyphs,  and  no  one  will 
ever  decipher  them,  d,  The  dark  tarn  of  Auber,  in 
the  Misty  Mid-Region  of  Wier,  was  to  Poe  a real 
place.  Stagnant  pools  and  fetid  heaths  were  the 
places  where  his  spirit  delighted  to  linger  He 
could  see  in  darkness  better  than  in  light. 

118 


His  poem,  Silence , tells  of  a region  where  he  kept 
tryst  with  “ corporate  silence.”  Corporate  silence! 
What  a thought!  Is  not  the  universe  itself  silence 
that  has  found  a body?  And  is  not  silence  the 
ghost  of  noise?  Somber,  sinister,  brooding  silence! 
Silence  that  can  never  be  silent,  murmuring  its 
drowsy  secrets  in  the  ear,  forging  the  minutes  into 
the  eternal,  forever-recurring  hours,  weaving  its 
arras  of  dreams! 

Poe  trod  strange  Jungfraus  of  silence.  There  are 
deep  lethean  lapses,  lustral  silences  in  which  the 
soul  seems  to  rest  from  its  Sisyphean  labors. 
Ulalume  is  his  most  remarkable  and  characteristic 
poem.  It  haunts  like  an  unremembered  thought. 
Here  at  last  are  the  Blessed  Isles,  here  the  lotos- 
land  of  the  distraught — star-dials  and  the  alley 
titanic,  and  the  realms  of  the  boreal  pole.  Ulalume 
is  the  last  word  in  poetic  mysticism.  It  is  the  soul 
of  Poe  cadenced. 

The  bitter  pessimism  of  the  man!  To  him  the 
universe  was  an  epic  scrawled  by  a bug.  The  Con- 
queror Worm  is  a vision  of  the  world  and  all  the 
nothingness  of  it.  There  is  the  same  philosophy  at 
the  bottom  of  it  that  penetrates  El  Magico  Pro- 
digioso  of  Calderon.  It  is  life  viewed  from  the 
trenches  of  despair.  Men  build  their  houses  of 

119 


dreams,  and  the  worm  gnaws  at  the  foundation. 
As  life  grows  longer  it  grows  shorter.  We  travel 
from  mother  to  mother-earth;  and  the  flesh  that 
we  love  so  well  is  spun  into  dust.  Man  has  his 
banquet,  and  is  banqueted  upon  in  turn.  C Mystic, 
pessimist,  poet,  mathematician,  a man  drunk  with 
beauty  and  love,  a bringer  of  strange  tidings — 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  signals  and  beckons  from  his  tomb. 


120 


PLUTARCH 

A COMMONSENSE  WRITER 

F all  the  writers  who  lived  in  Rome 
in  that  wonderful  time  which  we 
call  the  Age  of  Augustus,  none 
now  is  so  widely  read  as  Plutarch. 
Plutarch  was  a farmer,  a lecturer, 
and  a Priest  of  Apollo.  On  investi- 
gation, I find  that  the  office  of  Priest  of  Apollo 
corresponded  about  with  that  of  an  American 
Justice  of  the  Peace. 

Between  pasture  and  palaver,  Plutarch  became  rich 
and  owned  an  estate  on  the  Isle  of  Malta.  And 
there  he  lived  when  Paul  was  shipwrecked  on  his 
way  to  Rome. 

Plutarch  never  mentions  Paul,  and  Paul  never 
quotes  Plutarch.  What  a pity  they  did  not  meet! 
C.  Plutarch  wrote  the  lives  of  twenty-three  Romans 
and  compared  each  with  some  noted  Greek,  usually 
to  the  slight  advantage  of  the  Greek;  for  although 
Plutarch  lived  under  the  rule  of  Rome,  he  was  bom 

121 


in  a province  of  Greece,  and  his  heart  was  true  to 
his  own 

It  is  quite  probable  that  no  sure-enough  literary 
man — who  knew  he  was  one,  and  acknowledged 
it — would  mention  all  of  the  many  trifles  which 
Plutarch  brings  to  bear,  shedding  light  on  the 
subject  «•» 

Whether  Plutarch  gathered  some  of  these  airy, 
fairy,  pleasing  tales  of  persiflage  from  his  imagi- 
nation or  from  the  populace,  is  a question  that  is  not 
worth  while  discussing.  Practically  all  we  know 
of  the  great  men  of  Greece  and  Rome  is  what 
Plutarch  tells  us. 

It  is  Plutarch’s  men  who  live  and  tread  the  Board- 
walk with  us.  The  rest  are  dead  ones,  all. 

The  only  men  who  endure  are  those  whose  lives 
are  well  launched  on  the  inky  wave.  Heave  ho! 
Such  trifles  as  Caesar’s  remark  that  he  was  deaf  in 
one  ear;  that  Pericles  had  a head  like  an  onion; 
that  Cleopatra  employed  a diver  to  attach  a salt 
codfish  to  the  hook  and  line  of  Mark  Antony ; that 
Socrates  made  pastoral  calls  on  Aspasia;  that 
Aspasia  was  very  well  acquainted  with  Cyrus, 
King  of  Persia,  and  from  him  gained  her  knowledge 
of  statecraft — these  are  the  things  that  endear 
Plutarch  to  us. 


122 


The  things  that  should  n’t  be  told  are  the  ones  we 
want  to  hear.  And  these  Plutarch  discreetly  gives  us. 
n Shakespeare  evidently  knew  Plutarch  by  heart 
and  it  was  the  only  book  he  knew.  He  was  inspired 
more  by  Plutarch  than  by  any  other  man  who  put 
pen  to  paper.  It  was  the  one  book  in  which  he 
dived  and  swam,  in  the  days  of  his  budding  and 
impressionable  youth;  and  most  of  his  plots  are 
those  of  Plutarch. 

Lives  of  great  men  all  remind  us — of  a great  many 
things  that  we  would  do  if  we  were  able. 
Biography  broadens  the  vision  and  allows  us  to 
live  a thousand  lives  in  one ; for  when  we  read  the 
life  of  a great  man  we  unconsciously  put  ourselves 
in  his  place,  and  we  ourselves  live  his  life  over  again. 
CL  We  get  the  profit  without  the  risk,  the  experi- 
ence without  the  danger.  It  is  Plutarch  himself 
who  says  that  tragedy  is  always  pleasing  to  the  on- 
looker, for  the  reason  that  he  is  inwardly  congrat- 
ulating himself  that  he  is  out  of  reach  of  danger. 

MARK  Twain  said  there  are  only  six  original 
stories,  and  four  of  these  were  unfit  for 
ladies’  ears,  and  that  all  six  of  these  stories  trace 
back  to  Rameses  the  Second,  who  had  the  felicity 
to  live  ninety-six  years. 


123 


This  remark  of  Mark  Twain  traces  a direct  pedi- 
gree to  Plutarch,  who  said  the  Egyptians  lived 
life  in  its  every  phase;  and  anything  that  could 
happen  to  any  man  or  woman  happened  in  Egypt, 
therefore  all  stories  of  misunderstandings,  tragedies, 
comedies  and  such  can  be  traced  to  Egypt. 

Herbert  Spencer  was  once  beaten  at  billiards  by  a 
smart  young  man.  Spencer  proved  his  humanity 
by  making  a testy  remark  to  this  effect:  “ Young 
man,  to  play  billiards  well  is  an  accomplishment, 
but  to  play  billiards  too  well  is  proof  of  a misspent 
youth.”  s*  so* 

In  Plutarch’s  life  of  Pericles  he  has  King  Philip 
say  to  Alexander,  “ Are  you  not  ashamed  to  sing 
so  well?  ” 

And  Antisthenes,  when  he  was  told  that  Ismenias 
played  excellently  upon  the  flute,  answered,  “ Well, 
he  is  good  for  nothing  else ; otherwise  he  would  not 
have  played  so  well.” 

The  simple,  plain  commonsense  of  Plutarch  is 
revealed  in  almost  every  page  in  such  phrases  as 
this:  “ Superstition  causes  nervous  fear  and  much 
trembling  of  the  limbs,  and  mental  agitation.  From 
signs  and  wonders  seen  in  the  skies,  and  the 
thunders  and  lightnings  and  eclipses  and  certain 
movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  fear  follows, 
124 


but  when  understood  these  are  found  to  be  the 
harmonious  workings  of  Nature.  Therefore,  the 
cure  for  fear  and  superstition  is  a love  of  all  natural 
objects.” 

Could  we  now  express  the  matter  better? 

Plutarch’s  writings  have  passed  into  the  current 
coin  of  language.  His  works  are  literary  legal 
tender,  wherever  thinkers  meet.  Whoever  writes, 
and  writes  well,  is  debtor  to  Plutarch  for  much 
wit,  wisdom  and  gentle  philosophy. 

Academic  writing  dies  and  is  forgotten.  Information 
about  men,  women  and  events,  and  that  which 
relates  to  practical  life,  lives  on  and  on. 
Nine-tenths  of  all  personal  stories  of  the  great 
Greeks  and  Romans  trace  to  Plutarch.  For  instance 
when  the  mother  of  Themistocles  was  taunted  with 
being  an  alien,  she  replied,  “ True,  I am  an  alien, 
but  my  son  is  Themistocles.” 

When  Themistocles  was  asked  what  he  could  do, 
he  answered,  “ I can  take  an  insignificant  village 
and  make  of  it  a great  city.” 

This  sounds  like  the  remark  of  Augustus,  “ I found 
your  city  mud,  and  I left  it  marble.” 

The  words  of  a man  do  not  necessarily  live;  but 
the  words  put  into  his  mouth  by  a ready  writer 
often  do  «•» 


125 


THE  breezy,  epigrammatic,  friendly  style  of 
Plutarch  appeals  to  people  of  every  grade  of 
intellect.  <[  Note  the  following  quotations  from 
Plutarch,  and  see  how  this  man  has  ingrained  his 
words  into  all  literature: 


It  was  the  saying  of  Bion  that,  though  the  boys 
throw  stones  at  frogs  in  sport,  yet  the  frogs  do  not 
die  in  sport,  but  in  earnest. 


For  to  err  in  opinion,  though  it  be  not  the  part  of 
wise  men,  is  at  least  human. 


Philip  being  arbiter  betwixt  two  wicked  persons, 
he  commanded  one  to  fly  out  of  Macedonia  and 
the  other  to  chase  him. 


These  Macedonians  are  a rude  and  clownish  people, 
that  call  a spade  a spade. 


Pythagoras,  when  he  was  asked  what  time  was, 
answered  that  it  was  the  soul  of  this  world. 


After  Caesar  routed  Phamaces  Ponticus  at  the 
first  assault,  he  wrote  thus  to  his  friends:  “ I came, 
I saw,  I conquered.” 

126 


Cato  said,  “ I had  rather  men  should  ask  why  my 
statue  is  not  set  up,  than  why  it  is.” 


Pythias  once,  scoffing  at  Demosthenes,  said  that 
his  arguments  smelled  of  the  lamp. 


It  is  a true  proverb,  that  if  you  live  with  a lame 
man  you  will  learn  to  halt. 


It  is  indeed  a desirable  thing  to  be  well  descended 
but  the  glory  belongs  to  our  ancestors. 


Demosthenes  overcame  and  rendered  more  dis- 
tinct his  inarticulate  and  stammering  pronuncia- 
tion by  speaking  with  pebbles  in  his  mouth. 


Cicero  called  Aristotle  a river  of  flowing  gold,  and 
said  of  Plato’s  Dialogues,  that  if  Jupiter  were  to 
speak,  it  would  be  in  a language  like  theirs. 

He  said  that  in  his  whole  life  he  most  repented  of 
three  things:  one  was  that  he  had  trusted  a secret 
to  a woman;  another,  that  he  went  by  water  when 
he  might  have  gone  by  land ; the  third,  that  he  had 
remained  one  whole  day  without  doing  any  busi- 
ness of  moment. 


127 


For  my  part  I had  rather  be  the  first  man  among 
these  fellows  than  the  second  man  in  Rome. 


Go  on,  my  friend,  and  fear  nothing;  you  carry 
Caesar  and  his  fortunes  in  your  boat. 


Zeno  first  started  that  doctrine  that  knavery  is 
the  best  defense  against  a knave. 


Lysander  said  that  the  law  spoke  too  softly  to  be 
heard  in  such  a noise  of  war. 


Agesilaus  being  invited  once  to  hear  a man  who 
admirably  imitated  the  nightingale,  he  declined 
saying  he  had  heard  the  nightingale  itself. 


When  Alexander  asked  Diogenes  whether  he 
wanted  anything,  “ Yes,”  said  he;  “I  would  have 
you  stand  from  between  me  and  the  sun.” 


Whenever  Alexander  heard  Philip  had  taken  any 
town  of  importance,  or  won  any  signal  victory, 
instead  of  rejoicing  at  it  altogether,  he  would  tell 
his  companions  that  his  father  would  anticipate 
everything,  and  leave  him  and  them  no  oppor- 
tunities of  performing  great  and  illustrious  actions. 

128 


Even  a nod  from  a person  who  is  esteemed  is  of 
more  force  than  a thousand  arguments  or  studied 
sentences  from  others. 


To  conduct  great  matters  and  never  commit  a 
fault  is  above  the  force  of  human  nature. 


Archimedes  had  stated  that,  given  the  force,  any- 
given  weight  might  be  moved;  and  even  boasted 
that  if  there  were  another  earth,  by  going  into  it 
he  could  remove  this. 


A Roman  divorced  from  his  wife,  being  highly- 
blamed  by  his  friends,  who  demanded,  “Was  she 
not  chaste?  Was  she  not  fair?  Was  she  not  fruitful?  ” 
holding  out  his  shoe,  asked  them  whether  it  was 
not  new  and  well  made.  “ Yet,”  added  he,  “ none 
of  you  can  tell  where  it  pinches  me.” 


Alexander  wept  when  he  heard  from  Anaxarchus 
that  there  was  an  infinite  number  of  worlds;  and 
his  friends  asking  him  if  any  accident  had  befallen 
him,  he  returns  this  answer:  “ Do  you  not  think  it 
a matter  worthy  of  lamentation  that  when  there 
is  such  a vast  multitude  of  them,  we  have  not  yet 
conquered  one?  ” 


129 


The  old  proverb  was  now  made  good,  “ The 
mountain  hath  brought  forth  a mouse.” 


Pompey  bade  Sylla  recollect  that  more  worshiped 
the  rising  than  the  setting  sun. 


When  Demosthenes  was  asked  what  was  the  first 
part  of  oratory,  he  answered,  “ Action;”  and  which 
was  the  second,  he  replied,  “ Action;”  and  which 
was  the  third,  he  still  answered,  “ Action.” 


Geographers  crowd  into  their  maps  parts  of  the 
world  which  they  do  not  know  about,  adding  notes 
in  the  margin  to  the  effect  that  beyond  this  lies 
nothing  but  sandy  deserts  full  of  wild  beasts  and 
unapproachable  bogs. 


Anacharsis  coming  to  Athens  knocked  at  Solon’s 
door,  and  told  him  that  he,  being  a stranger,  was 
come  to  be  his  guest,  and  contract  a friendship 
with  him;  and  Solon  replying,  “It  is  better  to 
make  friends  at  home,”  Anacharsis  replied,  “ Then 
you  that  are  at  home  make  friendship  with  me.” 


Simonides  calls  painting  silent  poetry,  and  poetry 
speaking  painting. 

130 


The  people  of  Asia  were  all  slaves  to  one  man, 
merely  because  they  could  not  pronounce  the 
word,  No.  

Like  the  man  who  threw  a stone  at  a bitch,  but  hit 
his  stepmother,  on  which  he  exclaimed,  “ Not  so 
bad!  ” $•*  5^ 


When  asked  why  he  parted  with  his  wife,  Caesar 
replied,  “ I wished  my  wife  to  be  not  so  much 
as  suspected.”  

For  water  continually  dropping  will  wear  hard 
rocks  hollow. 


Themistocles  said  that  he  certainly  could  not  make 
use  of  any  stringed  instrument;  could  only, 
were  a small  and  obscure  city  put  into 
his  hands,  makeit  great  and  glorious. 


131 


THOREAU 

THE  MYSTIC  REBEL 

i*  Emerson  and  Poe  were  America’s 
two  most  significant  writers,  Whit- 
man and  Thoreau  were  her  two 
most  significant  figures. 

Thoreau  was  the  perfect  rebel.  He 
began  the  “spiritual  revolution” 
long  before  Ibsen  preached  it  to  Brandes. 

Without  bitterness,  without  a touch  of  melan- 
cholia, without  the  slightest  evidence  of  regret  he 
retired  from  the  little  world  of  “ practical  life  ” to 
the  infinite  universe  of  Mind  and  Nature. 

His  cosmic  nonchalance  was  as  sublime  as  the 
faith  which  engendered  it;  his  mysticism  was  the 
mysticism  sprung  from  the  deeps  of  wonder;  his 
unsociability  was  not  misanthropic,  but  arose 
from  the  fact  that  he  had  found  another  kind  of 
sociability;  he  had  become  the  crony  of  the  Great 
Comrade.  He  chummed  with  Night  and  Day,  and 
found  much  to  say  to  the  Oversoul. 

132 


The  law  of  adaptation  to  environment — that  an 
organism  can  survive  only  on  condition  that  it 
makes  peace  with  the  hostile  forces  that  envelop  it 
and  that  tend  to  its  destruction — is  contradicted 
absolutely  in  the  case  of  a mental  original  like 
Thoreau.  Genius  must  adapt  itself  to  its  heredities, 
to  its  instincts,  to  its  inner  urgings,  and  stand  for 
ever  opposed  to  its  physical,  social  and  religious 
milieu  s—  £» 

Revolt  is  dissent  from  environment.  All  geniuses — 
seers,  poets,  prophets — are  revolutionists,  and 
from  the  moment  of  their  birth  they  are  engaged 
in  a constant  war  to  conserve  for  their  own  interests 
the  things  that  are  in  them.  Their  greatness  is 
determined  by  non-adaptation  to  their  environ- 
ment. For  this  reason  geniuses  are  shy  and  retiring. 
It  is  their  instinct  of  fear.  Once  they  become  molded 
by  their  environment  they  are  lost.  All  things  con- 
spire against  them.  When  they  mingle  with  the 
herd  they  put  on  the  mask  of  mediocrity — often 
the  mask  of  vulgarity — to  throw  the  hounds  off 
the  scent.  They  insulate  themselves  in  non-conduc- 
tors, and  so  pass  over  the  deadly  coils  in  perfect 
safety 

Thoreau  would  not  herd.  The  come-and-go  of  life 
he  recognized  as  a kind  of  issueless  migration  and 

133 


hibernation.  Life  in  large  cities  to  him  was  merely 
the  delirium  of  momentum.  People  in  cities  move 
like  fish — little  fish — in  water  or  like  rats  in  a cage : 
guts  and  gulleys  that  lead  nowhere.  These  great 
spectacular  cities  are  a whirl  of  drunken  maenads — 
a fine  study  in  the  propulsive  power  of  delusions. 
Christ,  Heraclitus  and  Thoreau  took  to  the  Desert; 
the  Best  finally  break  into  silence.  Color,  variety, 
odor,  the  rise  and  fall  of  gladiators  battling  for  the 
nickel  that  one  of  them  has  dropped  in  the  gutter, 
the  cavalcades  of  the  commonplace — these  interest 
for  a little  while;  but  the  cry  of  the  Best  is  for 
harmony,  expansion,  and  so  they  take  to  Dreams — 
the  delirium  of  contemplation.  Here  Thoreau  was 
king  £»  £«• 

WE  say  dreams  are  fantastic  and  absurd; 

hence  they  mean  nothing.  But  our  daily 
life  must  seem  absurd,  nonsensical,  inutile,  comic, 
to  one  looking  on  from  a higher  sphere.  A dream 
is  no  more  irrational  than  is  life  as  De  Maupassant, 
Heine  and  Thoreau  found  it.  As  absurd  as  the 
gestures  of  harlequins  are  the  deeds  we  do  in 
dreams ; and  just  as  absurd  are  the  deeds  we  do  in 
this  dream  called  life,  wherein  mere  sequence  is 
confounded  with  rationality. 

134 


As  to  traveling — who  had  traveled  more  than 
Thoreau?  He  had  been  in  places  that  few  people 
could  visit.  He  had  seen  things  that  could  not  be 
seen  in  Europe. 

The  illusion  of  traveling — that  I can  escape  my- 
self by  moving  from  point  to  point — arises  from 
the  belief  that  when  you  move  the  body  you  move 
the  mind.  The  earth  is  in  perpetual  movement 
around  the  Sun,  and  in  a year’s  time  it  has  been  in 
millions  of  different  points  in  space,  but  it  is  always 
enveloped  in  its  own  atmosphere ; it  can  not  escape 
its  character.  All  much-traveled  people  are  blase — 
they  have  discovered  the  illusion  of  movement. 
You  think  stoicism  cowardice  when  it  is  the 
greatest  of  all  affirmations.  If  you  refuse  to  move, 
evermore  you  will  find  yourself  flinging  off  satel- 
lites, even  universes.  Create,  watch,  understand. 
Of  all  fallacies,  none  is  greater  than  “ Seek  and  ye 
shall  find.”  Seek  NOT  and  ye  shall  find.  Resign 
yourself  to  your  demon.  Sit  still  and  listen  and 
receive.  Men  live  most  in  sleep.  You  are  always  in 
your  atmosphere — like  the  earth,  you  are  always 
swathed  in  your  genius.  Little  people  must  travel. 
I travel.  Kant  and  Thoreau  did  not  have  to. 
Thoreau  conceived  the  Soul  to  be  a kind  of  infinite 
static  eye.  The  soul  was  everywhere,  partook  of 

135 


all  things,  was  the  eucharistic  wafer.  Thoreau 
moved  from  center  to  center,  not  from  place  to 
place  $— 

His  great  Truth:  drop  anchor  anywhere,  and  it 
will  drag — that  is,  if  your  soul  is  a limitless, 
fathomless  sea,  and  not  a dog  pound ; never  mind 
your  sails — furl  them,  and  bank  the  fires  in  the 
engine-room;  sit  in  the  crow’s-nest  and  follow  the 
anchor — from  this  flowed  his  nonchalance.  Nothing 
evil  could  possibly  befall  him. 

THE  soul  should  be  agile — always  prepared  to 
move.  No  retreat  in  the  mind  is  safe  against 
the  sudden  incursions  of  the  great  ancient  fatali- 
ties that  lurk  in  our  unfathomable  being.  Rather, 
the  deeper  we  build  in  the  soul  our  mansions  the 
more  we  lie  open  to  those  things  that  lie  deeper 
than  all  dreams,  deeper  than  all  conceivable 
depths.  You  may  make  your  citadel  proof  against 
the  hurricanes  from  without  and  the  lightning-bolt 
above,  but  there  is  no  art  yet  found  to  frustrate 
the  forces  that  work  from  beneath.  Beware  of  the 
fatalities  that  lie  depth  on  depth  within  you. 

The  drowning  man  by  his  frenzied  struggling  only 
beats  the  waters  still  higher  above  his  head  and 
so  makes  his  fate  more  certain.  So  in  our  struggle 
136 


against  circumstance  we  set  up  newer  and  newer, 
higher  and  higher,  waves  of  emotion  and  of  passion 
that  but  submerge  the  understanding  and  the 
soul’s  eyes  all  the  quicker.  Lie  still  and  float. 
Assent  to  the  order  of  things  smashes  the  tyranny 
of  that  order.  Approve  all  that  comes  to  your  hand 
— then  cast  it  away  and  think  no  more  of  it. 
Thoreau  knew  of  these  fatalities ; so  he  set  his  soul 
as  one  sets  a steel  trap. 

The  active  man  hunts  for  his  destiny — literally, 
he  “ pursues  his  calling.”  It  is  as  though  the  motes 
that  float  in  the  sunlight  were  to  hunt  for  the  sun. 
Utopia  is  here  and  now — it  is  a condition.  If  you 
wait  you  shall  be  claimed  by  your  rightful  owner; 
move  ever  so  slightly  toward  your  destiny  and  you 
move  from  a higher  to  a lower  level.  You  may  seek 
all  your  life  for  the  things  you  need,  but  if  those 
things  you  seek  do  not  need  you,  you  will  end 
lamed  and  mutilated.  The  man  who  forces  the 
Northwest  Passage  will  be  forced  through  it  seek- 
ing something  else  or  while  seeking  nothing  in 
particular.  They  who  “ pursue  their  calling  ” 
pursue  the  echo  of  it. 

Like  Spinoza,  Thoreau  was  an  adept  in  cosmic 
mathematics.  Dissolution  is  a backyard  view  of 
evolution — the  mathematics  of  growth  and  decay 

137 


are  the  same.  Growth  adds  two  to  two,  and  makes 
four;  decay  divides  four  by  two  and  makes  two. 
The  evolution  of  a pimple,  the  involution  of  a bud, 
the  dissolution  of  a sun  follow  one  law. 

Accident  is  always  perfect,  thought  invariably 
bungles.  You  are  carried  to  port  by  currents  that 
are  on  no  chart. 

If  the  effects  of  all  our  acts  could  be  followed  out 
in  all  their  ramifications  for  one  hundred  years,  it 
would  be  found  that  the  day-long  idler  had  done 
less  harm  to  his  fellow-men  than  the  most  indus- 
trious man  in  the  community. 

THOREAU  reached  for  nothing.  Success  always 
satirizes  our  dream  of  success.  Possession 
leaves  us  startled — to  have  a thing  is  to  have  it 
not.  The  very  rich  and  the  very  poor  always  look 
bored — disillusioned — for  their  states  of  mind  are 
exactly  the  same.  They  both  circle  about  the  same 
flame.  But  there  is  a mind  that  circles  about  its 
own  light — its  parallax,  aphelion  and  perihelion. 
Whether  it  appears  in  Benares  or  Walden,  Athens 
or  Weimar — now  or  not  now — the  place  where  it 
stands  is  the  center  of  duration,  the  core  of  all 
values.  It  possesses,  but  has  no  possessions;  it 
succeeds,  but  has  no  definite  successes. 

138 


Drowned  in  the  infinitude  of  space,  clamped  be- 
tween-times,  crawling  from  straitjacket  of  cir- 
cumstance to  another  straitjacket  of  circumstance 
— howbeit  we  view  it — no  matter  in  what  terms 
we  apprehend  our  mortal  state,  the  one  tremendous 
fact  remains  that  we  are  conscious  of  this  state, 
that  there  is  that  Consciousness  which  is  not 
drowned  in  the  infinitude  of  space,  clamped  be- 
tween-times,  and  does  not  crawl  from  circum- 
stance to  circumstance.  It  is  that  which  sees  our 
mortal  state!  This  was  the  basis  of  Thoreau’s  riant 
mysticism. 

He  laid  traps  for  himself;  found  himself  to  be  the 
Divine  Adventurer.  Man’s  whole  life  from  the 
cradle  to  the  grave  is  only  a partial  history  of 
himself.  The  whole  of  Self  is  never  circled.  There 
are  crypts  and  vaults  that  have  never  been  forced 
by  the  boldest,  peaks  that  have  defied  the  bravest, 
and  possibilities  that  have  forever  remained  im- 
possibilities. Our  dreams  are  an  arc  of  the  Ego; 
our  waking  another  arc,  and  the  adventure  after 
death  another  arc.  But  who  shall  piece  these  arcs 
together  and  calmly  view  his  own  completion 
from  that  Center  which  stands  inviolate  to  all 
change  and  motion? 

Thoreau’s  soul  wending  its  way  leisurely  along  the 

139 


highways  of  reveries  was  sometimes  suddenly  jostled 
by  a great  Personage  that  vanished  and  was  lost 
in  the  crowded  mental  thoroughfares  before, 
startled  and  amazed,  he  could  turn  full  upon  It. 

I\  /fYSTICISM  is  to  feel  the  mystery  of  a thing 
XVX  before  you  have  examined  the  thing.  The 
sense  of  mystery  was  Thoreau’s  first  and  also  his 
last  sense.  The  five  material  senses  were  but  the 
tentacles  of  that  original  sense,  tentative  guesses 
at  a solution  of  the  Enigma. 

Wonder  rises  with  insight.  The  characteristic  of 
the  superior  mind  is  amazement,  while  the  inferior 
intellect  is  only  capable  of  worship.  Amazement 
begets  poets,  seers,  philosophers.  A lifelong  wonder 
at  everything  that  is  presented  to  consciousness  is 
a life-long  growth,  the  soul’s  candidature  for  un- 
seen, undreamed-of  modes  of  existence;  while 
worship,  being  essentially  a moral  attitude  toward 
that  which  knows  not  us,  professes,  impliedly  at 
least,  to  have  found  a solution  to  the  Great  Mys- 
tery. Hence,  this  solution  is  a stoppage,  an  end, 
decay — stagnation,  senescence. 

If  I fly  to  the  zenith  I am  still  at  a nadir;  if  I fly  to 
the  nadir  I am  still  at  a zenith.  And  the  law  that 
holds  in  the  physical  universe  holds  in  the  mental 
140 


universe.  My  good  may  be  an  evil;  my  evil  may 
be  a good — for  neither  term  has  anything  to  do 
with  discoverable  ultimates.  The  bottom  of  the 
sea  is  the  top  of  a mountain;  the  top  of  a mountain 
is  the  bed  of  a sea;  my  highest  thought  is  only  a 
stalactite  in  this  Mammoth  Cave  of  wonders  which 
the  glow-worm  of  consciousness  has  illumined  for 
a moment.  We  may  have  as  many  ideas  about  a 
single  object  as  that  single  object  is  capable  of 
change — which  is  an  infinite  number.  Who  can 
put  his  finger  on  the  top  or  the  bottom  of  a cylinder 
that  revolves  quicker  than  any  eye  can  follow? 
The  mystic  of  Walden  never  was  foolhardy  enough 
to  put  his  finger  there.  He  watched  it  go  round 
with  delight. 

To  him  it  was  not  so  wonderful  to  be  immortal  as 
it  was  to  be  alive.  To  be  after  death  is  no  miracle; 
to  be  at  all  is.  If  I can  not  unriddle  myself  in  this 
Now,  how  can  I hope  to  do  it  in  a Then?  Merely  to 
find  myself  consciously  thinking  Here  is  more 
extraordinary  than  merely  to  go  on  thinking  for- 
ever somewhere  else. 

Truth  is  a matter  of  perspective;  it  is  a relation 
of  distance,  not  of  “ fact  ” and  conception 
At  a certain  point  geometrical  axioms  will  seem  to 
be  absolute  truths;  move  a pace  higher  and  they 

141 


become  relative  truths;  move  still  higher,  into  the 
supersensuous  world,  and  they  are  seen  not  to  be 
valid  at  all.  Imagination  demolishes  logic.  Before 
I can  speak  of  Truth  I must  first  find  out  where  I 
stand,  whether  I am  standing  anywhere,  and 
whether  the  thing  I call  my  truth  is  not  a passing, 
necessary  illusion,  whether  it  is  merely  a tool  or 
a “ find,”  whether  it  is  a thing  I really  see  or 
merely  part  of  a perspective. 

Culture  is  not  to  be  measured  by  book-learning 
nor  yet  by  experience.  It  is  the  manner  in  which  we 
confront  books  and  experience.  It  is  a frame  of 
mind.  It  is  an  attitude.  Thoreau  would  have  been 
a highly  cultured  mind  had  he  never  left  his  native 
town  or  had  he  never  read  a book.  C The  soul 
awaits  the  Great  Event,  the  Great  Romance — 
the  Unique  Adventure.  It  never  comes  to  pass,  for 
it  has  missed  it  in  the  expectation.  Thoreau  expected 
nothing.  Here  and  now  was  the  Great  Event. 

Life  was  the  Unique  Adventure. 


142 


ARISTOTLE 

THE  WORLD’S  FIRST  SCIENTIST 

RISTOTLE  lived  four  hundred  years 
before  Christ.  He  was  a native  of 
Macedonia,  which  was  then  a prov- 
ince of  Greece.  When  a boy  of 
seventeen  he  walked  to  Athens,  a 
distance  of  over  two  hundred  miles, 
in  order  to  attend  the  School  of  Plato.  Aristotle  had 
been  a mountain  guide,  and  a mountain  climber, 
so  a little  walk  of  two  hundred  miles  was  nothing 
to  him.  All  his  life  he  was  an  out-of-doors  man. 
He  was  a lover  of  animals,  especially  of  horses. 
He  wrote  a book  on  the  horse — a book  of  three 
thousand  pages.  In  the  book  he  said  all  there  is  to 
say  on  the  subject,  and  any  man  who  now  writes 
on  the  horse,  quotes  Aristotle,  knowingly  or  not. 
C.  Plato  and  Aristotle  were  associated  as  pupil  and 
teacher  and  then  as  fellow  teachers  for  over  thirty 
years.  They  finally  separated  on  the  relative  value 
of  poetry  versus  science. 


143 


The  world  needs  its  poets,  but  it  needs  the  scientist 
more  s«* 

Science  is  the  classified  knowledge  of  the  common 
people.  Science  shows  us  how  to  make  our  poetry 
practical,  working  it  up  into  life  and  using  it  to 
irrigate  the  waste  places  of  our  lives. 

Poets  are  plentiful — especially  on  Boston  Common 
— but  scientists  are  rare  as  white  blackbirds. 
Aristotle  was  the  world’s  first  scientist.  He  made 
the  world’s  first  geological  collection;  the  first 
herbarium;  and  the  first  zoological  garden,  barring 
that  of  Noah. 

Very  much  of  our  present  scientific  terminology 
goes  back  to  Aristotle.  We  call  the  plants  by  the 
names  that  Aristotle  gave  them. 

We  have  busts  in  bronze  of  Aristotle,  modeled  in 
wax  from  life,  by  his  pupils. 

His  head  was  not  remarkable  for  size,  neither  were 
his  features  handsome.  He  was  always  a country 
man,  always  a workingman.  His  form  was  lean  and 
bony,  his  hands  large  and  strong.  And  while  his 
face  was  seamed  with  deep  lines,  his  mood  was  one 
of  happiness  and  sweet  content. 

The  plan  of  teaching  adopted  by  Aristotle  was  so 
simple  that  the  School  Board  of  Athens  could  not 
understand  it,  and  finally  Aristotle  was  exiled  from 
144 


Athens.  He  taught  by  setting  his  pupils  to  work; 
they  collected  natural  specimens,  and  talked  about 
them.  He  was  the  friend  and  companion  of  his 
pupils.  Instead  of  disciplining  them,  he  loved  them. 
<1  People  in  the  best  society  of  Athens  said  that 
Aristotle  lacked  dignity,  hence  their  displeasure 
and  the  suggestion  that  he  move  on. 

I want  here  to  quote  simply  one  remark  of  Aris- 
totle’s. It  is  this,  “ The  land  that  produces  beautiful 
flowers,  and  luscious  fruits,  will  also  produce  noble 
men  and  women.” 

That  is  to  say,  man  is  a product  of  soil  and  sun- 
shine, just  as  much  as  is  the  tree.  Man’s  body  is 
over  seventy  per  cent  water.  Man  gets  his  strength 
from  the  food  evolved  from  the  ground,  and  more, 
perhaps,  from  the  electricity  in  the  atmosphere. 
C Now  Aristotle  loved  horses.  He  trained  horses 
to  do  his  bidding.  And  he  argued  with  Alexander, 
his  pupil,  that  a horse  wa§  a product  of  nature,  and 
as  a man  could  train  horses,  so  could  he  also 
train  trees  and  flowers.  And  while  man  himself  is  a 
product  of  Nature,  he  yet  has  the  power  to  fashion 
and  form  Nature  and  utilize  the  forces  of  Nature. 
Thus  does  man  make,  in  great  degree,  his  own 
environment. 

The  climate  of  Greece  is  the  climate  of  California. 


145 


There  are  towering  mountains,  and  wide  stretching 
arid  plains.  The  snow  falls  upon  the  mountains, 
and  man  through  his  scientific  skill  can  water  the 
land  which  Nature  has  neglected. 

Thus  did  Aristotle  make  the  waste  places  provide 
flowers  and  fruits. 

And  then  it  was  he  said,  “ The  land  that  produces 
beautiful  flowers  and  luscious  fruits  will  also  pro- 
duce noble  men  and  women.” 

Alfred  Russel  Wallace  says  that  man’s  first  edu- 
cation came  through  the  domestication  of  animals. 
Through  the  responsibility  of  caring  for  animals, 
and  the  exercise  of  forethought  for  their  protection 
he  evolves  himself.  Friedrich  Froebel,  who  was  a 
forester  before  he  was  a school-teacher,  said  that 
through  the  care  of  flowers  and  trees,  men  evolved 
their  own  spiritual  natures.  Years  after  he  had 
said  this,  Froebel  was  surprised  to  find  that  Aris- 
totle, twenty-three  centuries  before,  had  said  the 
same  thing. 

Prayers  for  rain  are  good,  but  an  irrigating  ditch 
is  more  reliable.  Providence  has  to  be  re-inforced 
by  intellect  before  we  get  the  highest  good.  God 
certainly  needs  man,  for  God’s  fruits  and  flowers 
can  not  compare  with  those  where  man  has  brought 
human  system,  science  and  love,  to  bear. 

146 


Darwin  does  not  say  that  man  descended  from 
the  monkey.  He  does  say,  however,  that  man  and 
the  monkey  had  a common  ancestor.  Long  centuries 
ago  there  were  two  brothers  that  lived  in  the  woods. 
One  took  to  the  plains  and  became  a man.  The 
other  one  remained  in  the  woods,  and  is  a monkey 
yet  £#> 

Where  Nature  is  too  lavish  in  her  gifts  man  does 
not  grow.  In  order  to  evolve  and  advance  man 
must  do  his  part,  meeting  the  Dame  at  least  half- 
way t>+  £•» 

If  Nature  does  too  much  for  you,  it  is  exactly  the 
same  as  if  your  parents  supplied  all  of  your  wants. 
That  monkey  in  the  woods  lived  on  nuts  and  ber- 
ries, and  a hollow  tree  was  his  house. 

The  brother  on  the  plains  had  to  build  a house.  He 
exercised  his  ingenuity  and  worked.  He  passed 
through  the  savage  stage  where  he  lived  on  the 
wild  products  of  Nature.  Then  he  caught  a cub 
wolf  and  it  grew  up  and  lived  with  him,  helping 
him  catch  game.  Then  to  domesticate  goats  and 
sheep  and  cattle  was  to  make  food  and  skins  for 
clothing  reasonably  sure. 

So  man  passes  out  from  the  savage  stage  to  that  of 
the  nomad  who  herds  his  cattle  and  sheep  in  the 
valleys  where  there  is  water  and  pasturage. 


147 


To  ride  an  ox,  horse  or  camel  comes  along  as  a 
natural  result. 

Then  to  plant  seeds  and  sow  grain  in  order  to  feed 
the  horses  and  cattle,  and  incidentally  to  make 
bread  for  himself,  rather  than  depend  upon  the 
chance  bounty  of  Nature,  follows  in  due  course. 

So  man  evolved  from  a shepherd  into  a farmer: 
from  the  nomad  into  an  agriculturist. 

To  depend  upon  the  rainfall  for  water  to  make  the 
grain  grow  and  flowers  blossom  is  the  first  and  only 
way  of  which  man  knows.  Then  in  times  of  drought 
he  will  carry  water  to  moisten  the  parched  ground. 
€L  Next  it  occurs  to  him  to  make  an  irrigating 
ditch  and  divert  a stream. 

Then  it  is,  and  not  till  then,  that  flowers  and  fruits 
of  the  finest  forms  become  possible. 

And  the  thought  and  labor  required  to  provide  the 
water,  evolves  the  man. 

So  Nature  lures  men  on  to  the  struggle  for  things 
and  eventually  it  comes  to  the  worker  that  he 
himself  has  grown  and  evolved  through  the  struggle. 
C.  Well  did  Aristotle  say,  that  “ the  land  that  pro- 
duces beautiful  flowers  and  luscious  fruits,  will 
also  produce  noble  men  and  women.”  And  in  the 
production  of  the  finest  flowers  and  fruits,  man 
finds  his  own  soul. 


148 


The  nations  that  have  made  the  greatest  impress 
have  been  those  that  lived  in  dry  and  arid  districts 
and  not  those  located  amid  the  bounteous  natural 
gifts  that  exist  along  the  coast  and  near  the  swamps 
and  jungles  where  things  grow  lush  and  lusty. 
Wild  animals,  venomous  serpents  and  poisonous 
plants  are  there  also,  to  neutralize  the  natural 
advantages. 

But  on  the  arid  plains  the  dangers  of  miasma  and 
disease  are  minimized.  By  the  aid  of  irrigation 
man  controls  the  supply  of  moisture.  He  plants  the 
things  he  cares  for.  He  selects,  rejects,  crosses, 
breeds  and  devotes  his  talents  to  scientific  culti- 
vation 

Egypt  was  a land  of  canals.  Assyria  grew  great, 
prospered  and  ruled  the  world  because  she  knew 
how  to  apply  water  to  desert  land,  where  God 
supplied  the  sunshine. 

Egypt  and  Assyria  went,  down  to  their  death  when 
their  citizens  forsook  the  gardens  and  flocked  to 
the  cities  to  have  a good  time,  leaving  the  land 
where  grew  the  flowers  and  fruits,  to  slaves. 

Greece  grew  great  on  the  tax  collected  from  men 
who  knew  how  to  irrigate.  The  climate  and  soil  of 
Greece  are  the  same  as  that  of  California — vast 
mountains  and  arid  plains. 


149 


Through  the  garden  of  Plato  ran  a diverted  stream 
whose  waters  were  cold  and  sparkling  from  the 
mountains. 

Plato  was  under  the  ditch;  for  Academus  who 
owned  the  ranch  had  banked  his  all  on  a canal, 
which  finally  made  him  one  of  the  millionaires 
of  Athens. 

Here  it  was  that  Aristotle  lived,  where  the  sky  was 
blue  three  hundred  days  in  the  year,  amid  the 
lavish  and  laughing  luxuriance  of  land,  where  God 
supplied  the  sunshine  and  man  the  water.  And 
here  it  was  that  he  wrote,  “ The  land  that  produces 
beautiful  flowers  and  luscious  fruits,  will 
also  produce  noble  men  and  women.” 


150 


HERE  ENDETH  THAT  GOODLY  VOLUME 
ENTITLED  THE  OLYMPIANS  BEING  EL 
BERT  HUBBARD’S  TRIBUTE  TO  TALL 
SUN-CROWNED  MEN  LOVINGLY  GATH 
ERED  TOGETHER  AND  DONE  INTO  A 
BOOK  BY  ROYCROFT  CRAFTSMEN  AT 
THEIR  SHOP  WHICH  IS  IN  EAST  AURO 
RA  COUNTY  OF  ERIE  STATE  OF  NEW 
YORK  ANNO  DOMINI  MCMXXI  AND 
XXVI  OF  THE  ROYCROFT  FOUNDATION 


